


Travel Buddies

by Asharion



Series: Travel Buddies [1]
Category: The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: AU Sabine Wren, Action, Actually just all Mandalorians are badass, Boba Fett - Freeform, Boba Fett / Fennec Shand because they're adorbs, Bobba Fett is badass, Bromance, But she's badass and artsy anyways, Children of the Watch, Crystals play a big part, DID I MENTION THIS IS SLOW BURN?, Din Djarin POV, Din Djarin keeps his helmet oath, F/M, Fennec x Boba is even more slow-burn than Din x Sarah, Force Sensitives, Grogu POV eventually, Grogu is HIGHLY RELEVANT IN THE STORY, Happy Family, Healthy Relationships, It is, Jedi Culture, Jedi and Sith both still exist but rare, Lightsaber Lore, Long plotline, Lore Exploration, Lore drawing from a collection of Star Wars Movies Books and Games, Lots of Fisticuffs, Luke Skywalker eventually, Mandalorian Culture exploration, Mandalorian Dancing, Mandalorian Music, Mando'a, Mando'a translations provided for each chapter, Mostly Sarah's POV, Multi, Multiple-book series, Old Jedi lore, Other, Other character POVs eventually, Poor Boba just wants his armor back, Romance, Since I don't know her character super crazy well yet, Skraan'ikase, Sloooow burn, Slow Burn, Slow Burn., They will be a while in coming though, Training Scenes, Tusken Raider funsies, Tusken Raiders - Freeform, Tusken Raiders culture, fennec shand - Freeform, lots of feels, lots of travel, mind tricks, multiple POVs, super slow burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-20
Updated: 2021-02-27
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:41:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 25
Words: 244,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28186311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Asharion/pseuds/Asharion
Summary: NOTE: Chapter count is NOT FINAL. It is only *how many chapters are CURRENTLY written.* It will keep increasing.----It's hard to sling a gun, pilot a ship, beat up the badguys, -and- take good care of a force-sensitive child who gets into trouble the moment he's unattended.Din Djarin needs a nanny.Fortunately for him, an ambush-turned-shootout reveals a brave individual who risks her life to save a child she knows nothing about, and happens to be in the perfect position to take on the job of caring for a little green Jedi.--This fanfic started as an exploration of Mandalorian culture and ways it could manifest, and my want to write cute fluffy feels interspersed with lots of action-packed fisticuffs and shoot-outs. It will wander.THIS IS A SLOW-BURN STORY. Both in plot and in the romance aspect of it.
Relationships: Boba Fett / Fennec Shand eventually, Din Djarin / OC, Din Djarin / Original Female Character
Series: Travel Buddies [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2085555
Comments: 201
Kudos: 211





	1. The Babysitter

**Author's Note:**

> Heeeey!
> 
> So, first, let me say how excited I am to share this. Also, if you're interested in being a betta reader with a sharp eye for catching plot-holes and enhancing the representation of lore, hit me up! I'd love someone to help with hard editing passes before chapters get published. I have 200+ pages to work with as of the date this has been published, and the first few chapters are solidified on their final edit pass.
> 
> Notes on lore: I aim to remain true to the Star Wars universe and keep the story feeling very in-theme for it. However, I also wanted to explore some of my own ideas, which may include things like tweaking some historical figures for my plot needs... Or just to mess with the main characters ;)
> 
> This is the longest story I have ever written. Ever. Period. I already have the ending planned, which is something I have never done.
> 
> There will be feels, action, romance, my own takes on Tusken Raider, Mandalorian, and Jedi cultures, as well as a sassy battle bard who will show up eventually. Marrek. My best boy.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 01-12-2021 MAJOR EDIT: Chapter One has undergone a MAJOR REWRITE. And by major, I mean I re-wrote a good portion of it, and added... let's just call it "a lot" of pages, in order to better introduce characters, and fix some minor inconsistencies ;)
> 
> There are some major plot tweaks and shifts here, so if you haven't re-read the chapter... I highly advise doing so, and I promise you won't suffer much "reading-the-same-thing" syndrome with how much new content there is.
> 
> Enjoy, lovelies!
> 
> \---
> 
> Also, note; in Star Wars canon, humans have a lifespan of about 120 years. In my AU, the average lifespan is about 150 years for non force users.
> 
> Sarah is 43, and Din is 47 in this fic.
> 
> If you're appalled at Sarah and Din being "old" - they're just entering the prime of their lives when this story takes place.
> 
> Also also, forties are not old. You're not "old" until you either hit the triple digits or you start -acting- old ;P
> 
> Also also also, fun trivia: Din Djarin's actor, Pedro Pascal, is 45 years old in real life. So I really don't think it's that unthinkable ;P Feel free to imagine them younger if that floats your boat, it really only comes up a handful of times.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THIS CHAPTER HAS BEEN COMPLETELY RE-DONE AND EXPANDED UPON as of 01-12-2021
> 
> If you haven't re-read it yet, I highly advise doing so!

Sarah opened her eyes to a drip of water on her face. It had yanked her out of a good dream, the contents of which were already lost to her as she stared up at the roof.

Condensation had gathered on the splotchy metal of her spaceship’s interior, familiar and aggravating. Moisture gathered in the ship during the foggy nights on this planet, despite her attempts to seal the gaps in its damaged hull. It never failed to wake her when morning came, and the sun rose hot and bright.

For three cycles, she’d been stuck here. And every day she was given this same rude awakening, no matter where on the ship she moved her thin sleeping pallet, or how often she tried to rig a tarp inside. Water had only gathered on the underside of that, too.

She groaned as she tossed the thin blanket off herself and sat up, then rubbed the sleep from her eyes. Dressed in patched beige trousers and her gray chestwrap, she welcomed the flow of air over warm skin as she stood up from the floor. The metal was pleasantly cool against bare feet as she padded across the narrow length of her cruiser’s main room, and entered the bathroom.

It was cramped, as most facilities on spacecraft were inclined to be, but it held the luxury of a real mirror and a dedicated wash station for laundry. She ignored the slim shower cavity and instead went straight to the cracked glass to take stock of her bedhead.

Familiar features met her gaze; natural eyebrows rested in a gentle curve above sleepy, light blue eyes. They were set into an angular, almost squarish face with high cheekbones and a defined jawline that leaned somewhere between masculine and feminine. A dainty nose and delicate lips softened her otherwise sharp features. Pale cheeks held a faint flush caused by the rising temperature, and she fought down a yawn and the desire to crawl back into bed.

Sarah knew if she were to do more than finger-comb her unruly, choppy brown hair as she did now, she could make herself into something approaching beautiful.

She didn’t want to.

It was much harder to go unhassled and unnoticed in a crowd with a reason for eyes to already be drawn her way, and she preferred the anonymity her current plainess afforded.

The sound of an engine outside caught her attention, and she frowned as it drew near, then dropped in volume as the vehicle shifted into idle mode.

A clatter of small rocks against metal reached her ears, and she hissed a soft curse as she spun away from the mirror and exited the room. She knew that greeting well.

“Ye up yet, girl?” a low, nasally voice asked from outside. It was thickly accented, and

had a strange resonance to it that reminded Sarah of a hissing snake, which always gave away the fact its owner was inhuman. She’d recognize it anywhere.

“You’re early,” Sarah called sourly. “Give me fifteen minutes and I’ll be out, I haven’t even eaten yet.”

“Yah, well, ah’ve got another passsenger t’ ferry down t’ town ‘fore th’ marketsss open t’ ssset up their booth, ssso ye’ve got four minutesss t’ get in th’ ssspeeder if ye ssstill wanna go t’day.”

“That’s not enough time!” Sarah cried, dismayed, and regretted her choice to spend her previous evening doing laundry and reading tool manuals. Morning was the time to prepare her market goods and sort out what she’d take into town.

A glance to the crooked clock above the entrance to the cockpit confirmed her accusation.

The ferry driver wasn't just early; they were  _ ridiculously _ ahead of schedule, and she seethed as the cursed reptile only called back a repeat of her allotted time. If it weren’t for the fact the genderless lizard had the cheapest going rates for as far out as she lived from civilization, she’d hire someone else.

She rushed back to her bed pallet and snatched up a faded blue tunic from the top of her footlocker, then threw it on.

Brown leather boots she didn’t bother to lace followed next as she skipped socks.

“Ye got two minutesss left, girl,” the driver called.

“I’m coming!” she snapped acerbically, and was convinced they were shaving seconds off the count. If it weren’t for the fact they were entirely out of sight, she had half a mind to trick them into giving her more  _ time. _

She threw on her belt and hastily buckled it, then took a moment to check the seat of her new blaster pistol as it slapped against her hip. It was a cheap model, but serviceable.

“One minute, girl.”

“You’re counting way too fast!” Sarah called back. She growled at the sound of the engine revving to life outside. They had left her behind before, and she had no desire to waste her day stuck in the middle of no-where.

Sarah cast a desperate look around the small space, then unlocked her chest and grabbed out her money pouch, and stuffed the entire thing into one of several mis-matched pouches on her belt as she side-stepped towards the door. She had some credits tucked into another pocket on her belt, but it wouldn’t be enough to make her day in town worthwhile… let alone have funds left over to pay for the ferry ride  _ back _ to her ship.

With no time to fetch finished goods from the storage compartment in the back, she decided she’d just have to buy her materials today instead of trade for them, unless someone could be convinced to hire her for an odd job or two.

The door hissed open on well-oiled hinges, and a pair of pistons lowered it down towards the ground as a walkable ramp. Sarah ran off of it before it was fully level, and jumped down to the dew-damp earth.

“Let me lock up and I’m on,” she demanded as she glowered at the ferry driver in their silver land speeder. The lifeform in question was a fat, reptilian species with scaly flesh and bright, luminous orange eyes. A pair of bulbous goggles rested on their broad, ribbed forehead, and a clawed hand pulled the things down over their eyes as they leaned back with a creak of leather. They nodded shortly at her.

Sarah fetched a small silver fob from her belt and cued the ship to shut itself back up, then engaged the ground-security. It wouldn’t stop the most determined of thieves, as she had learned the hard way, but it would keep out most of the riff-raff while she was away.

Fortunately, few ventured out to this rocky canyon of dull red boulders and scraggly underbrush, and her ship was concealed from easy view by the assortment of tarps and piled vegetation she’d heaped over it through the course of the seasons.

As the door latched shut and the ship chirruped a musical note to confirm it was locked up, Sarah turned and jumped into the speeder even as it began to move.

“Warning would have been nice,” she told the driver as she settled herself into the back passenger seat directly behind them, and began to tighten up her boots. Wind stole part of her words away, but she knew the sharp-eared reptile would hear her.

“If ah didn’t like ye ssso much, ah wouldn’t ‘ave come at all,” they revealed, then laughed. It was an ugly sound, like a croaking frog mixed with a broken blender as they chortled at her.

Sarah sighed, and shoved her frustration away.

Just a few more sales - good sales - and she would have enough to pay the mechanic she’d worked out a deal with to repair her ship, and then she’d be on her way. If things went well, she could be off the planet in as little as two week’s time.

Sarah couldn’t wait.

~*~

Despite the unpleasant start to her morning, Sarah enjoyed the ride on the speeder. It was hard not to, with the wind in her hair and a beautiful display of land around them now that they were free of the canyons. The seat next to her had since been filled with two thin boxes and a large cloth sack, and a pleasant perfume clung to the fabric that she enjoyed smelling.

In the front passenger seat another human had joined them, and Sarah had been delighted to discover he was a merchant who specialized in jewelry fixings and hologram pads. The latter wasn’t overly useful to her directly, but she’d managed to strike up a bargain.

Ten custom carry cases for six hundred credits, and he’d supply the metal hardware for Sarah to make them with. She’d have to buy the leather herself since what she had on hand wasn’t the right material for what he wanted, but that wouldn’t be an issue. She already knew exactly where to go to get it.

And she was more than willing to lose sleep on stitching them together to rush this order out. In two, maybe three days’ time, she’d be just shy of her goal.

“Itsss ah good day fer ssselling. Ah’ll be back by nightfall t’ pick ye both up, be ready before th’ firssst ssstar of th’ cryssstal conssstellation ssshowsss above th’ mountainsss,” their driver announced.

“Good deal,” the man in the front seat replied in his deep, rumbling voice.

Sarah looked away from admiring the rolling grasslands and lush greenery. Up ahead, a few miles out yet, a sprawling city loomed into view. Around it was a cluster of a vast array of spaceships all parked on the flat earth, and one was lowering down to the ground now - a gray, boxy thing with wide wings on its top, each tipped with large engines.

Sarah frowned, then pushed herself up straight in her seat for a better look.

“This isn’t the town of Derra,” she observed.

“No, this is Trisect. Busiest starport in the eastern regions, which makes for a good market,” the merchant supplied cheerily. Their driver offered no comment, and Sarah worked her jaw.

She had heard of the place - and it was not somewhere she had ever wanted to go. It wasn’t the largest settlement on the planet, yet it had a reputation of frequent intergalactic travel... and the usual sort of ruffians that came with it. She also knew that the New Republic didn’t have influence here, unlike some of the other cities Sarah had been to. That wasn’t to say there wasn’t order, but the local governments couldn’t always be relied on to provide town security, especially for the average person.

Not that the New Republic was really any better on that front, this far in the Outer Rim territories of the galaxy, but at least they had a clear way to follow-up on problems when they happened.

Sarah pursed her lips as she considered.

On the one hand, it meant the town would be more dangerous.

On the other, it also meant she was likely to be able to strike up better bargains, with the lower tax rates sellers would likely be paying. There was also a high likelihood of vendors stocking their wares with goods purchased from the black market, which meant she could pay a fraction of the usual price right off the bat.

It was worth the risk.

Sarah swallowed thickly, then sat back into the cushion of her seat. She adopted a neutral expression with an easy smile and relaxed shoulders, even as her thoughts whirled.

All too soon, they were at one of two main entrances to the walled city. It wasn’t really fortified - the barrier was only as high as two tall people standing foot-to-shoulder, and made of crumbling gray stone and odd patches of rusting metal. Ships were parked in no particular order, wherever there was space to land, and Sarah took her time to admire them while she had the chance.

Most she didn’t recognize, but a few older models she’d seen before and some of the newer releases were familiar. She got a better look at the ship she’d seen landing on their ride over, and gave a low whistle of appreciation. Three legs propped it up in a level landing position, and its main body was long and rectangular with the back-end angled upwards. It was definitely pre-Empire, which made it vintage, though it sadly looked its age with obvious signs of repair-work and an old, faded paint job of yellow stripes down the side. A pity.

She didn’t know the name of this particular model, only that it was in the same class as a few similar-looking gunships, and she spotted a pair of long-barreled cannons mounted to the front on either side of the cockpit.

The sound of engines drew her eyes upwards, and she was excited to see a well-restored transport coming down to land. It’s sleek design and distinctive silhouette marked it as being from her late grandfather’s generation; and the bright red paint job was a pleasantly jaunty contrast against the dreary colors surrounding it.

When Sarah caught sight of the symbol emblazoned on its side as the ship touched the ground, however, she recoiled.

It was a large, stylized human skull in white paint and glaring black eyes, with a row of tally marks beside it. Most were white, but some were different colors, and she’d seen that method of recording a handful of times before.

It was either a mercenary or a bounty hunter’s kill-or-capture log. The different colors were probably to mark significant ones, or perhaps different species.

Neither of her companions paid it any mind, and Sarah forcibly turned her gaze forward just as the speeder came to a jarring halt.

“Fifty creditsss,” the driver instructed shortly. The merchant paid him without hesitation, and Sarah stalled for time in getting out of the vehicle as he collected his goods and began to walk off. She stretched her back and yawned expressively, then ambled up to the driver’s side of the speeder. The reptile held out their hand expectantly, and Sarah resisted the incredibly tempting urge to strong-arm them into compliance of a much fairer rate.

It had been many years since she’d exercised her more unusual talents to coax someone in business for her own gain, and she wasn’t about to start now.

“Twenty now to cover fuel, and eighty for this and the return trip when you pick me up again. I’m not trusting you won’t just up and leave me here,” she said firmly. “And don’t tell me that’s not a fair deal, because I know  _ exactly _ how much it costs to run this thing,” she reminded them with grim satisfaction.

The reptile chortled at her, and their lipless mouth curved into a sharp-tooth smile. They shoved their goggles up so she could see their grotesquely orange eyes as they fixed on her, black pupils narrowed to dangerous slits, but she could sense their amusement clearly. It radiated in the air around them like an invisible bubble.

Sarah didn’t bat an eye, and calmly held their gaze. She’d met far more intimidating lifeforms in her years of travelling the galaxy, and that didn’t count the time spent with her now-retired mother’s family business. Merchants who made a living bouncing between the markets and living hand-to-mouth saw every variety of species when they came to buy.

“Thisss isss why ah like ye ssso much. Ye ‘ave gutsss girl. Itsss ah deal. Make sssure yer new friend makesss it back in time, or ah’ll leave with jusss’ ye.”

“I’ll be here before dark,” she promised, then carefully counted out the money, and dropped it into their six-fingered, clawed hand.

She didn’t wait to watch them drive away, and struck off for the town. She walked with a confident stride that didn’t vere into the realm of cocky, which would draw attention, and refused to slink along like a frightened scrub, which would draw  _ worse _ attention.

Trisect was a big place. A helpful stranger she asked for directions showed her a hologram map of the different districts, and Sarah took her time in studying it. She was in one of the main residential areas now. The very center of the settlement was comprised of a mix of industrial factories, all situated around a main bazaar where the original landing ground for ship transports had been in the early days. The city had grown up around them.

“Thank you,” she enthused, and shared a friendly wave with the man as she turned and trotted off down the dusty main street, then cut through a series of intersecting side-roads. The better looking buildings were gaily painted, and boasted small gardens around them. She stopped when she realized she was on a street of empty houses, all with sales signs in front of them, and recent construction obvious in the young plantlife and churned up ground.

It didn’t take her more than half an hour to reach where it was she wanted to be, and she stopped at the edge of the main market square to take in the sights.

Though she hadn’t wanted to come here, Sarah had to admit, she was enjoying it. The architecture with it’s strange spiraling columns and blocky walls was an unusual yet charming mix of geometry and organic shapes, and the market itself was a lively affair. The buildings ringed the entire area and blocked the view of most of the factories and warehouses beyond, and in the very center was a large cluster of little shops with decorative facades. In the space that remained, Brilliant colors of dyed cloth shaded the outdoor stalls of countless vendors.

Many of them weren’t open for business yet, and she could see shop owners unpacking boxes as they set up their tables for the day. A few early birds were already hawking their wares to potential customers.

If it weren’t for the metal bars welded over all visible windows, and numerous individuals that bristled with weaponry as they stood guard beside the majority of merchants and their goods, it would have been easy to be disarmed by the place.

Sarah started forward, only to stop in her tracks as a black-haired woman cut in front of her, engrossed in conversation with a man in silver armor plating over a dark bodysuit. The woman was on the short end, similar to Sarah’s height, and built like a truck with obvious muscles and a strong, prowling gait. She had a commanding presence that was hard to look away from.

Sarah didn’t have long to take her in, however, before someone else stepped into the way and blocked her view, and she focused on weaving through the crowd instead of people-watching.

“Now what’s a little thing like you doing out in a place like this?” a man asked from behind and to the left, and Sarah pretended not to hear him as she quickly cut away in a different direction. For a moment, she thought they might follow after, and prepared to raise a mental defense against pursuit, then relaxed when the need swiftly vanished. Alone again in the multitudes surrounding her, she set off to find a leather supplier.

She found even better. She found  _ work. _ And it was something that was high paying, because she’d landed a wealthy client. Between this job and the bags she had agreed to make, she’d be off the planet by the end of week if the mechanic worked fast enough.

“You can have it fixed today?” Ald’ri repeated eagerly, one slender brow raised. She was a regal looking Twi’lek, with brilliant pink skin her deep maroon dress matched well with. The lady was adorned by elegant jewelry set with dripping jewels that weren’t diminished by Sarah’s knowledge in recognizing they were fake. The glass chips were well cut and carefully set, and that in itself made them both lovely and valuable.

Sarah couldn’t believe her luck.

“Yes, give me about six, maybe seven hours, and I can have this good as new,” she promised, as she turned the device over in her hands. It wasn’t the technology that needed repair - an expensive looking datapad set up for managing sales transactions - but the decorative case built around it. It was made of an intriguing combination of metal and wood, with intricately inlaid bone and a leather band wrapped around the thick edge. It had a long carrying strap with a large, gaudy buckle of worked metal, which was set with tiny crystals that had a pleasant hum to them as she brushed her fingers against their smooth surfaces.

The problem was the delicate antique beadwork and decorations it boasted. She was told it had been badly damaged in a speeder accident by Ald’ri’s nephew; a corner was split entirely, and several pieces of inlay had popped out or been cracked.

Some of the missing parts had been recovered, but Sarah would have to cut new ones. Fortunately, the woman had already purchased the needed materials; Sarah had met her at the booth Ald’ri had stopped to buy slats of bone blanks from.

“It is a deal, then. If I am pleased by your work, I will make it nine hundred credits,” Ald’ri offered generously, and Sarah restrained herself from grinning like an idiot. Instead, she only smiled warmly and held a hand out across the woman’s sales table to seal the agreement. She felt like she was shaking on so much more than a simple craft job - she could already feel the thrill of the galaxy at her fingertips. She was more than ready to continue her travels.

Freedom had never tasted so sweet, until all at once it was choked by the acrid taste of charred flesh and melting plastics as energy bolts lit up the bazaar like a festival gone wrong. People screamed, livestock penned up on the other side of the market panicked.

Sarah whipped her head around with wide eyes, then looked back again as Ald’ri yanked the datapad from her hands and ducked behind her stall.

For a moment Sarah stood there, frozen in place, then she looked wildly around for somewhere to hide that had better security than a triad of tables with tablecloths hiding their legs.

She dove for cover behind a pile of wooden crates, then dared to peek out to see what in the world was going on.

There was too much commotion and no obvious details for a complete outsider to immediately tell who was who or why they were firing at each other. Some of the folks she had identified as guards were shooting at others, and a few dropped dead as she watched. The only other pertinent detail Sarah managed to grasp was a glimpse of a man in shiny armor as he was hounded into an alley-way to avoid a hail of shot. She realized she’d seen the stranger before, when she’d first entered the sales district - he was very distinctive.

People around her were screaming as they ran from the open space and into the side roads, or ducked for cover behind anything available. Several lay dead or injured on the ground, caught in the crossfire if they hadn’t been targets themselves. 

Sarah shifted her weight onto her toes to get a better look, and picked out a handful of those responsible for the mayhem. The shooters she singled out were dressed in no particular uniform; rough clothes, patched together pieces of armor, and each bristled with a light array of weaponry. One wore a black duster with a newly familiar white skull on the back, and Sarah’s stomach turned over in unease.

They largely ignored those who ran past them as they advanced on a storefront the armored man had last been seen at, and Sarah ducked down behind the crate as two of them fell dead from blaster bolts that came from another direction.

The exchange of vollies seemed to last for ages. Sarah’s heart pounded in her ears, and her nose stung from the heavy smog that was quickly filling the open air as it crowded between the narrowly packed buildings and booths.

She swallowed thickly as the sounds of fighting came closer, and when the advance didn’t stop, she peered out around the crates. Four figures, all human, were advancing on her position with their guns raised up to the roofs. A fifth one of another species Sarah didn’t recognize, some kind of oversized, humanoid bug with four arms, trailed behind, and kept watch on the ground level behind them.

Sarah wasn’t willing to find out if they were the kind of people to kill passers-by who might choose to report them after getting such a good look at their faces. She took her chance while they were distracted to creep out from behind the crates, then ducked behind Ald’ri’s stall.

“Come with me, danger’s coming,” Sarah hissed at her. The woman looked at her with wide eyes, then scrambled forward on hands and knees. Sarah grimaced at the light jingle of her jewelry, then peeked out around the table and swallowed thickly. They hadn’t yet been noticed, but they would be in a few moments if they didn’t move fast.

She grabbed the woman by the wrist and pulled her into a crouch, and together they slinked back and away, deeper into the market. Ald’ri followed without a word, terror in every line of her lovely features.

Sarah drew up short at a thick stone protrusion from one of the storefronts - the door itself had already been locked and barred. There was just enough room for one person to hide in the narrow gap the facade created, and she shoved the Twi’lek into the space. It was ridiculously dumb luck that this building had been painting in a daring pattern of reds and light, salmon accents.

Ald’ri blended right in. With any luck, she’d be safe here.

“Stay here, don’t move, keep flat against the wall,” Sarah instructed her, then glanced behind herself. The nearest hunters had reached her former hiding space, and she grimaced as the one with a cricket-like insect’s head stopped to palm a shiny trinket off the abandoned stall, then returned to his work.

In the next instant he fell dead, and plasma bolts filled the air in a swift exchange as the shoot-out resumed its fevered pitch.

Sarah had already picked out her own hiding spot; there was an alley across the narrow street she now stood on that she could escape into.

As she ran for it, Sarah concentrated on imagining that she was nothing to take notice of, just another one of many unimportant details on the sideline of this conflict, and willed herself to go unnoticed.

It was a good thing she did, because several more shooters strolled into the market right where she was crossing. Even as she was forced to run within arm’s reach of one of the grizzled looking gunslingers, the bearded man never so much as glanced at her. She caught the expressions on some of their faces, those that were humanoid enough to be understood - they looked like satisfied cats who had successfully cornered their prey, and one was talking quietly into a comm-link.

As Sarah reached the mouth of the shadowed alley, she realized with dismay that it was a dead-end. It was still better than hiding out in the open, and so she settled into her new bolthole in a crouch by the mouth of the alley to keep an eye on the proceedings. She had a pretty good feeling that there were several sides to this conflict - some of the shooters were definitely guards, while others she could only guess were bounty hunters or mercenaries after someone.

Moments later, Sarah was jarred from her speculation as her heart seized with a gut-wrenching, instinctual panic as someone ran past her holding a struggling, flailing bundle of cloth that could only be a baby.

She simply  _ knew _ this stranger wasn’t the kid’s friend - there was nothing protective about the way the child was being carelessly crushed against the woman’s leather armored chest, with a gun still held in hand. By the time Sarah had absorbed these alarming details, the woman cried out when a blaster bolt hit her square in the back and sent her sprawling, dead before she hit the ground. The child rolled out of her arms with a small cry, and narrowly avoided being crushed.

Sarah didn’t think about it. She didn’t even know what was happening until her hands were plucking at rough-spun, thick brown cloth. A warm weight was settled in the crook of her arm even as Sarah’s other hand pulled her pistol free of its holster.

One of the gunslingers, a man with a braided beard and an outfit of brown leather and gray cloth, dropped his attention from the rooftops to aim his gun at her, clearly startled.

Sarah pulled the trigger of hers first.

His gun tumbled free from lifeless hands, and she stood frozen in horrified shock as his body hit the ground a mere few yards away with a loud thud. A small cloud of dust billowed around him from the impact. His face was obscured from view by the twist of his body, but she could see the steam that rose from charred flesh.

Time seemed to grind into an unnaturally slow crawl as she took in more details than she’d ever have thought possible in such a short span of time. She counted six other armed individuals in her immediate vicinity, and she suddenly understood what it was they were after - the child in her arms. Two raised their guns at her, while the others were busy firing at some target off to her left and out of sight. One was already beginning to drop his gun, dead from return fire that had probably happened when she was busy with her own kill.

Sarah snapped out of the trance when a green beam of light flew past her face, close enough her skin felt blistered from the heat. She shot the two gunmen who had been taking aim - and firing - at her in the heads, one of whom fell dead as he had no protective helmet on. The other was knocked backwards, and she didn’t wait around to find out if he was permanently out for the count. She turned and ran for all she was worth, deaf to all but the loudest of noise around her and the ringing in her ears.

Sarah rounded the first corner she saw, and came face to face with an unexpected sight: a stormtrooper in scuffed armor. At first, he ignored her as she jumped aside and out of his way with a gasp. Then she saw the obvious movement of his helmet as the soldier did a fast double-take at the bundle in her arms. The baby’s cloth cover had fallen askew, leaving his tiny, green, and large-eared head bare. The delicate points drooped backwards as the child remained utterly silent.

“Hand it over,” the Stormtrooper barked at her, voice distorted by the respirator of his helmet. When she didn’t immediately comply, he raised his blaster and squeezed the trigger.

Sarah skittered to the side in an awkward, hopping side-step as she fumbled her gun, badly startled. His rifle followed her movements, each blast getting closer in quick succession until her hand finally remembered how to function, and she shot him in the neck. He dropped to the ground like a sack of rocks. She stared at the freshly made corpse as bile rose in her throat.

“Oh my gods, I am not going to survive this,” she whispered.

The baby gurgled at her as if in distressed reply, and she spared its ridiculously large, innocent eyes a shell-shocked glance before taking off down the road, passionately thankful this one hadn’t been a dead end.

Sarah ran opposite the direction of gunfire and chaos, heading deeper into the city streets. Even as she heard an improbable rush of engines and boots hit the ground behind her, she desperately willed those she passed to take no notice, to think of her and the child as unremarkable and forgettable. She skidded around the first corner she came to, and ignored the new burning stitch in her side that grew more painful the longer she ran, a distant ache she barely registered amidst her panic and her focus on escape.

She was so very out of shape for this sort of thing. How long had she been running for? Minutes? Hours? There was no way to tell, because she hadn’t paid attention to how many buildings she passed, and time didn’t seem properly relevant anymore.

Factories gave way to cheerful houses with their newly familiar painted fronts, potted plants, and carefully tended gardens. They rushed by as she drew farther away from the business quarter of town and back into the residential area, and she thought she might know where she was.

One of its residents ran out into her way and brought Sarah to a skidding halt on the grassy dirt road. The bile returned up her throat as she almost shot them on pure reflex, pistol raised and finger half-squeezed on the trigger, her nerves fried from being on high alert and so very overwhelmed. She was shamefully glad they didn’t seem to notice her as they ran by without so much as a glance, and carried on without knowing how close they’d come to death.

Badly out of sorts now, Sarah took a deep, hitching breath to pretend it could calm her down, and then she took off running again.

Only, it was like running through molasses this time. As if her sudden stop from before had jarred everything in her body and made it remember its physical limitations, every step sent jolts of needle-like pain stabbing through her limbs. Her muscles burned. Muscles she didn’t even know she _ had _ burned. She was certain if she lived, she’d be working out every day for the rest of her life just to be sure she never felt like this again. Her concentration was splintered; people now glanced her way as she rushed by, even if they didn’t recognize her or know she was part of the ongoing conflict. The stitch in her side was particularly painful - more so than any time she’d ever remembered running herself ragged as a child playing games with friends.

Actually, the stitch in her side didn’t really feel like that at all. It was much,  _ much _ worse. She was abruptly aware of something warm and wet that made her shirt cling uncomfortably to her skin, and it was too saturated to be from sweat alone.

_ ‘Don’t look, don’t look, don’t look, just keep running,’ _ she thought, afraid.

If she did, and she confirmed what she already knew she knew yet refused to admit, she might actually lose it, and going into shock would no doubt be the death of both of them.

So Sarah kept running, even though her steps were flagging and her vision was beginning to go blurry and unfocused, even though she couldn’t feel her toes anymore and the only two sensations present in her mind besides the burning need to keep running, keep surviving, was the increasingly heavy weight of the child in her arms, and the warm, sticky patch on her abdomen.

The promise of potential safety loomed not far ahead, in the guise of what Sarah guessed was an abandoned house; it was framed partially by an overgrown, unkempt garden, and had boards secured over the windows. They needed to get out of sight so she could collect her bearings enough to hide herself and the child from being discovered, and Sarah rushed towards it with a surge of hope and relief. She was so very tired of running.

Her foot had just crossed the threshold when someone grabbed her roughly from behind, and hauled her backwards by the collar of her shirt.

“Give it to me,” a masculine, gravelly voice barked at her. It had a strange warble to it that told her it was not a human who had nabbed her. Sarah stumbled backwards with a sharp gasp, and turned her head to look over her shoulder with wide eyes as he continued, “I’ve got the child! We’re on the east quarter by the sales lot.” He spoke into a comm link attached to his vest with his gun-hand held against its button.

Sarah was frozen in shock until she felt him release her shirt and yank at the child in her arms, and she went cross-eyed when his short, squat blaster pointed at her head. She hastily let go of the babe long enough to free her own weapon that he probably hadn’t noticed or she’d already be dead, and shot him in the stomach while he was distracted securing his catch.

A strangled cry escaped halfway up her throat as he fell forward and she fumbled to grab her newly adopted ward. She staggered under the brief press of his weight as the child let out a protesting squeal, and then she was standing with him safe in her arms again.

She touched the side of her hand that held her pistol to his head, and took a moment to confirm he was alright. Pointed ears that stuck out the side of his head lifted slightly, and he made a closed-mouth cooing noise that she decided was a good sign.

“You’ll be alright, it’s ok, we’ll be ok,” Sarah promised shakily, her voice over-loud as she spoke over the ringing in her ears, just as the child suddenly shrank into her arms and whined in distress, low and sharp.

A gun clicked behind her. Actually, three did.

Sarah slowly pivoted as the hairs on the back of her neck stood up on end, and was met by the sight of three armed individuals in as many species, all taking aim at her.

Before a single blast was fired or anyone could speak, all three of them were dropped by a series of fast, lethally accurate shots that came from somewhere above and behind her. Sarah immediately booked it, and wheezed at the pain that ripped through her stomach.

“It’s gonna be ok,” she gasped. “It’ll be ok. I’ll keep you safe. I will,” she promised, even as she stumbled over nothing and could feel the-substance-that-shall-not-be-named dripping down her pants leg. It left a splotched trail of vivid red behind with every step she took.

Sarah slammed to an undignified halt not long later when something big stepped out in front of her. She only had a split second to turn herself so her shoulder would take the brunt of impact and not the child she held, because she didn’t have the strength to stop properly. She recognized the shine of silver metal on a man’s body as she crashed against his hard chestplate, with an unvoiced scream lodged in her throat. Suddenly there were muscular arms around her, and gloved hands that mercilessly pushed and pulled, guiding her steps as she stumbled forward.

She tried to lift her blaster at the stranger, but it was pulled from numb fingers.

“You can’t have him,” Sarah slurred, and tried to turn away. “I’ll kill you first. I’ve kill… Killed, ten soldiers, you’re not nothing, y’hear?” It was both a boastful lie and an empty threat, but since her body wasn’t obeying her commands and she was still being ruthlessly prodded along, talking was the only defense and weapon left to her. She tried to force the thought on her abductor, to convince him to let her go, that he didn’t need to restrain her or the child, but the effort nearly made her vision go black.

“He’s mine to protect. Now you are, too. Keep moving.” The man’s clipped voice was distorted, muffled, and she wasn’t actually sure if it was real or not. It was so distant. Her arm was forcefully curled back to her chest, and re-wrapped snug around the strangely silent child. He was still alive, she knew, because he was breathing heavily and occasionally made a soft, quiet grumble.

Lights and colors bloomed in her eyes, and while some distant part of her knew it was the scenery of the town and the explosions now going off in it as the fighting escalated, her immediate focus was unable to grasp the assault of information.

Suddenly, it was dark. She’d been pushed through a doorway and a cold, solid weight pressed behind her back as she was pinned to the wall.

_ “Shhh,” _ his voice hissed in her ear as she began to struggle. Because she wasn’t being hurt, or threatened, and his words were starting to sink in and the child was still held snugly in her arms, Sarah didn’t argue, just quietly obeyed. A thousand drums rolled thunderous and rhythmic outside, drawing closer, and she realized belatedly that it was footsteps she was hearing. And maybe her own heartbeat.

The noise faded and then there was an eerie hush, before the weight behind her eased back to give her space. Her eyes adjusted enough she could see her immediate surroundings; she’d been pushed into the sheltering alcove of a building’s front door, and pressed out of sight of the open archway nearby. Her eyes fell to the scattered few droplets of red smeared on the entryway’s dark front step, which had gone unnoticed by whoever it was that had stampeded by. Thinking of the rustle of cloth and hard, clicking plastoid, Sarah had a sinking gut feeling on who it’d been. She’d already killed one of them.

“Come on, you need to keep moving,” the stranger ordered her.

“Who’re you?” she managed, and realized her eyes were shut. When had she closed them?

“I’ll explain later. Let’s go.” And then they were moving again. She stopped trying to make sense of anything as she just let herself be pushed and pulled along, and poured all her focus into one singular task: don’t let go of the child.

~*~

Din Djarin opened his eyes to a quiet beep in his ears that pulled him from a light doze, and the flicker of his visor’s display screen on night-vision mode. He sighed deeply, then sat up in the confined space of his ship’s sleeping chamber. It was  _ just _ big enough he fit in it fully stretched out, and he knocked a shoulder pauldron against the metal wall as he reached for the control panel to turn the lights on. 

Orange-gloved fingers that extended from metal-backed, brown fingerless gloves found what they were looking for, even as Din turned his head to look at who he shared this small, cozy space with.

Night-vision flicked off as the space filled with warm yellow light, and he got a clearer look at the child that had come into his care through unusual means.

It was asleep in a crudely made hammock formed of broad ratchet straps Din had stitched together, and filled with comfortable blankets. All he could see was the top of its green head, covered with a delicate dusting of white peach-fuzz, nearly invisible to the eye.

The child grumbled and burrowed deeper into its blankets, and Din Djarin sighed.

No one had asked him why he’d been willing to upend his entire life for the sake of one alien child of unknown origins, and he was glad for that.

Din wasn’t really sure himself, but it felt right, and he trusted that.

And that was reason enough.

The kid lifted its head at the sound of the door sliding up, and a wash of cooler air entered the sleeping room. Din ducked beneath the hammock stretched across the entry, and slid himself out into the belly of his ship’s main floor level.

The Razor Crest was spacious by typical ship standards, with a large hull that was just barely wide enough to fit a land speeder in, and long enough to house at least two of them nose-to-engines with a little room to spare. Normally, this space remained empty except for any carbonite blocks of collected bounties, of which there were none at present.

Movement drew his gaze, and he looked over to the side of the wall where a bed pallet had been made up on the ground out of piled blankets. Cara Dune sat up in it as she shoved the top one off, her long black hair tousled. She combed her fingers through it to gather it all to the right side in a stylish sweep that revealed the buzz-cut side of her head.

She slept fully clothed as he did, in a padded black shirt adorned with blue-painted armor plating that protected her collarbone and shoulders. A black ridge wrapped around her neck to protect it, and her forearms were covered in blue vambraces. Black gauntlets with matching blue bands of metal over the knuckles and a pair of knee protectors completed her light armor. The insulated leggings she wore matched her unified aesthetic, and she straightened the holster attached to the belt slung around her hips as she stood up.

“Are we there?” she asked. If she was still tired, it wasn’t betrayed in her speech.

“We will be shortly,” Din answered, and ignored the roughness to his own voice. He hadn’t slept well in the last few weeks, not since he had acquired the child behind him into his care.

Not since the child had become a Foundling by the dictations of the Mandalorian Creed, and Din had found himself as a surrogate father.

It was too early in the morning to be thinking about this, barely eight minutes into the first Watch of the standardized time cycle he organized his days by.

A warbling coo from behind brought him up short, and Din turned around to see the child had sat up in his hammock. It now looked at him with its wide, glossy black eyes he always struggled to look away from.

It made a decidedly hopeful sound, and Din sighed.

“I’ll get you food in a bit,” he promised. “We need to land first.”

The child grumbled at him, and its large, pointed ears drooped back and down as it settled back into the hammock.

Din gingerly picked the kid up with both hands, careful not to squeeze the tiny body in its voluminous brown robe too hard, and settled the child in the crook of one arm.

“Strap in for landing,” he ordered Cara as he made for the ladder next to his bunk.

“Finally. I forgot how much I don’t like space travel,” Cara stated as she followed him up to the cockpit, and took a seat in one of the two open passenger chairs. “So, how long are we going to be here for, exactly?” she wondered.

Din passed her the child to hold onto and took his seat in the pilot's chair.

“Not long,” he answered finally. They’d buy what they needed, and get out.

Behind him, Cara scoffed lightly.

“I’d love a nice, easy trip into town for a change,” she enthused with dry humor. “I don’t want another Nevarro.”

Even with a helmet on, Din withheld a grimace at her words as he quietly sighed through his nose. He didn’t want to be reminded of what had happened there.

“At least there’s not any Imperial presence here,” Cara continued, and this time when Din sighed, it moved his shoulders. “What?” Cara wondered as she heard it, humor in her voice. “I’m just saying, things are looking up for us for a change.”

“Try not to tempt fate,” he finally answered dryly, if only to get her to stop talking. It had the opposite desired effect.

“Relax. It’s not going to happen just because I said it. I don’t believe in that superstitious nonsense,” Cara retorted, an eye-roll practically audible in her expressive voice. The child she held made a soft cooing, warbling noise at the end as if in response to her, but it was probably just uncanny timing.

Din Djarin’s shoulders heaved as his chest expanded and contracted in a deep, bone-weary sigh, then he smoothly moved the joysticks in his hands forward as he brought them down through the atmosphere.

He hoped Cara was right.

She wasn’t. She definitely wasn’t.

As they bolted for cover in an alley-way between crowded storefronts, Din Djarin hit one of numerous buttons on a small pad on his left vambrace to connect it to the child’s armored hovering pram. Blaster bolts ripped through the air a step behind him, and he could hear Cara offering return fire with her heavy repeating blaster. Din swung his left hand out towards the farther end of the alley, and the egg-shaped pram followed the movement.

The last glimpse of the child he got was of wide black eyes and perked ears looking his way before the doors sealed shut like a clamshell, and secured the Foundling safe inside. Din checked the rooftops to be sure no bounty hunters were above them as he drew the blaster pistol off his right hip, then joined Cara at the mouth of the alley.

“This is  _ not _ my fault,” Cara asserted. Din believed her; this had become normal for him since he’d absconded with the child.

“On your left,” he answered, and moved his pistol above her other shoulder to take out a target to their right. People in the busy marketplace screamed as they bolted from danger.

Din felt his heart clench painfully tight as he caught a glimpse of those who had been caught in the way of the sloppier bounty hunter’s shots, and forcibly put it out of his mind.

There was nothing he could do for them except to draw the fighting away from such a populated area.

“Fall back,” he ordered his companion, and together they backed up deeper into the shadowed lane, then turned and ran for it. The child’s hover pram followed after as they passed, and Din skidded to a halt as they came to a T-intersection. Cara bolted to the right, and he followed after her.

Contrary to his expectations, they didn’t come out again into the market square, but found themselves in a tangled mess of narrow streets and a claustrophobic press of boxy buildings.

Not overly far away, he could still hear the very active sounds of plasma bolts.

Images of a massacre in the market square flashed across his mind as he wondered what they could still be shooting at, unless the hunters had begun to fight amongst themselves.

“We need to get back to the ship,” Din instructed Cara as they jogged down a street crowded with rotted wooden crates and stinking refuse he’d rather not look too closely at.

A noise caught his attention from above, and he whipped his head up in sync with his pistol as a human figure appeared on the rooftops. They took aim, and Din Djarin pulled the trigger. The hunter let out a strangled cry, still alive as he fell forward.

A solid thump echoed in the space around them as the body hit the ground head-first. He was definitely dead now.

“This way,” Cara called, and took another turn.

“You know where we’re going?” Din asked, wondering at her confidence.

“Oh yeah, studied the maps we don’t have like a pro,” she answered sarcastically. “Of course I don’t, but this way feels like the right--”

Cara skidded to a halt as she turned a corner onto a wider street, and Din caught a glimpse of her wide, shocked eyes even as he registered the fact the sounds of blaster-fire had gotten closer again. It was rare to see the ex shock-trooper so thoroughly caught off guard. It would almost be comical, if it weren’t for the sinking feeling in his gut.

In the next split second Din was at her side even as Cara struggled to catch her balance and not fall over from her halted forward momentum, and he saw what had caught her attention.

Din Djarin didn’t waste time to gawk as he grabbed her firmly by the back of her belt, and bodily hauled her back behind the wall just as the nearest row of white helmets turned their way.

It was an entire  _ platoon _ of stormtroopers.

“The targets are this way!” one of them called, their voice distorted and staticy from their helmet’s cheap sound processor.

Din rethought his belief on Cara’s backwards predictions being irrelevant.

As if she could read his thoughts, she snapped,  _ “Still _ not my fault!”

“I have doubts,” he answered, and took the lead as they cut through another intersection just as plasma bolts ripped through the air around them. One bounced off the back of his helmet. Though the durable Beskar metal repelled it, the impact still sent him stumbling forward a step as he rounded the corner, and his ears rang from the loud, shrill echo it caused. For just a moment, his eyes closed involuntarily.

“Dank farrik,” Cara swore softly.

Din opened his eyes and saw what had torn the oath from her mouth. Ahead of them, four bounty hunters blocked the exit onto the bazaar, and two flanked them on the rooftops.

Behind him, footsteps thundered.

Din sighed.

“Give us the kid,” one of the hunters demanded as he stepped forward. “You’re outnumbered.”

“You sure about that?” Cara asked, and adjusted the grip on her rifle. “Because I hear backup coming.”

The moment their opponents’ heads turned at the sound of the platoon’s approach as it finally reached their ears at their end of the street, Din used the distraction to drop two of them where they stood.

He and Cara bolted for the next turn just as the first of the soldiers caught up, and Din thought they might make it as the two opposing sides opened fire on each other even as several took aim at himself and Cara.

Then he heard the dull  _ tink _ and bounce of a metallic object on the dirt ground as it bounced and rolled along behind them.

He barely had time to move the child’s hover-pram out of the way before an explosion ripped through the air, and sent them all flying forward down the street.

Cara handled it best, having been the farthest out. Din caught a glimpse of her running down the lane to avoid someone shooting at her from the roof from out of his line of sight.

He grunted as he hauled himself up to his feet, pistol still held firmly in hand. His head throbbed from the shockwave, and he knew he would have bruises on his body from how he’d landed, but he was otherwise unharmed. All these details he absorbed as a distant afterthought of flowing information, second-nature to him as breathing, as he sought out his highest priority with a surge of barely restrained panic.

The Foundling’s pram was dented and hovering nearby, the top split open. Even as he caught sight of it, one of the sliding doors creaked and dropped back into its slot. A green head turned to look Din’s way as the child burbled quietly in alarm.

A blaster bolt smacked Din soundly on the shoulder and sent sparks flying hot and sharp against the high collar of his neck. Even with the protective fabric he could feel the brief flash of heat as he charged towards the child under his care with single-minded purpose.

Between one step and the next, Din Djarin found himself knocked off his feet as arms wrapped around his midsection. He twisted with the motion as he fell with his assailant, and his knuckles smashed into the sentient insect’s head with a dull crunch. It didn’t knock his opponent out, and they tussled wildly on the ground.

Din drew the knife from his boot as his blaster was knocked away, and jerked his head out of the way of the being’s sharp looking mandibles as it tried to bite his throat.

In moments it was over, and Din heaved for breath as he shoved the corpse off and yanked his knife free in the same motion.

He was on his feet with his blaster reclaimed in the next instant, and whirled around.

Everything around him seemed to turn in slow motion as his world ground to a soul-rending halt.

Dust motes drifted about in lazy swirls, illuminated by a shaft of sunlight. A light haze of smoke polluted the air and gave the narrow space of the alleyway an ethereal, haunted look.

Through it all, Din’s gaze locked onto the sight of the armored pram. It had been spun around in a different direction, and he could see the open cavity clearly as the light struck it part-way, and illuminated the inside.

It was empty.

Panic surged, hot and sharp and coupled with a brilliant flood of violent fury that rocked him to the core, and effectively cut through Din’s trance like he’d been doused in scalding water.

Some people lost their focus when they were enraged.

For Din Djarin, he lost every sense of himself except for one clear, single-minded objective. It burned through his chest and flooded his limbs with adrenaline. It scorched away all else beyond his sole priority, his  _ only _ priority.

He wanted his child back.

~*~

Tahr Storik stood on the roof keeping watch over the progress of the fight as he tracked his partner’s movements. She had the asset in hand, and it wouldn’t be long before they had it safely secured on the ship. Once they entered hyperspace, there would be no way for the Mandalorian to catch them.

He adjusted the goggles he wore that let him easily track the heat signatures of those involved in this gunfight. He hadn’t been expecting the stormtroopers, or for the mercenaries they’d hired as help to open fire against them. It had turned this into a sloppy affair, with looting in the markets and scuffles against those who were supposed to work together, but as long as they turned the asset in alive, the Moff would turn the other way.

If it died, they’d get a lower cut, and that was acceptable, though undesirable.

“Report positions,” Tahr ordered as he spoke into a comm-link in one gloved hand.

“Drawing back, Noik has the asset in hand. Falling back to the rende--” the voice cut off abruptly as the line went dead, and Tahr swore.

He didn’t have time to radio again, as movement caught his eye from below.

Tahr did a double-take as he stepped forward to get a better look.

One figure fought amidst a group of Imperial soldiers that dropped around him like flies, and he could see down another street the woman that worked with the Mandalorian was busy in her own fight from the rooftops.

Tahr had heard of how excellent the Mandalorians were in the art of combat. He had heard the legends, heard the whispered rumors. The Empire had conquered their world and lain waste to their ranks to preemptively remove a very formidable threat.

If they had been that ferocious, Tahr had thought, they wouldn’t have been defeated.

As the lone Mandalorian below left a swath of destruction behind him and the body count rose, Tahr thought maybe the stories still had it wrong.

Mandos weren’t just excellent fighters.

They were an ungodly force of unstoppable nature. A legend born in flesh and blood.

A surge of adrenaline rushed through Tahr’s body as he crouched at the edge of the roof and put the Mandalorian in his sights. The thrill of the hunt was one thing, but ending a legend was its own kind of reward. Even without the expensive Beskar metal the warrior below flaunted in his armor, this kill would make a name for Tahr Storik that the Bounty Hunters Guild would sing of for cycles to come. He’d have free choice over any quarry he wanted; the highest bidders would seek out his services.

He was about to make history.

Tahr sighted in the man’s shiny head as the Mandalorian stopped to strangle a Stormtrooper from behind with one arm held with crushing force to the soldier’s throat, then dropped the scope a hair’s-breadth. Tahr locked onto the slim gap between the helmet and the jetpack mounted to the warrior’s backplate. Just as he began to pull the trigger, the Mandalorian dropped the newly made corpse and whirled around.

Tahr only had enough time to register the man’s raised arm before a grappling line shot from the sleek silver vambrace, and a cord wrapped around his neck. He dropped his gun as he clutched at the thin cable line in panic, desperate to remove it, desperate to--

The world would never know of Tahr Storik’s exploits. He hit the ground with a broken neck, dead long before impact, and his story ended there.

~*~

Din Djarin stepped over the final corpse as he prowled through the street with murder in every purposeful stride. The sniper’s rifle tumbled to the ground beside him, and clattered across the ground until it bumped up against a broken white helmet and came to a halt.

Stormtroopers and a small handful of bounty hunters riddled the ground around Din. He kept his gaze turned skywards, and watched for an open enough space above his head he could take flight.

As soon as he was free of clothes lines and rickety fire-escapes, Din hiked a knee up and stepped forward as he sharply jerked the thumb and wrist of his right hand. The wrist-control gesture ignited the jetpack behind him, and he rocketed up into the sky.

He spotted Cara immediately - she had taken to the rooftops, half-hidden behind a sturdy chimney, as she dropped a pair of bounty hunters in the square below.

Din spotted his ward in the next instant - a small bundle of brown cloth held in the arms of a woman. Two corpses lay at her feet, and even as he caught sight of her, she dropped two of the bounty hunters with deadly headshots.

He wasn’t surprised to see them in-fighting. The price the Imperials had on the Foundling’s head was enough to turn the loyalty of even more noble-minded individuals.

Din Djarin took aim at her as he gave pursuit, and growled when his shots missed the hunter by a near foot of space. He wasn’t used to shooting while in flight, and he cursed his lack of skill in this newly acquired equipment.

He’d just have to catch up to her on the ground.

It didn’t take him long to track the bounty hunter down as he shot over the rooftops, and ignored a volley of blaster fire turned his way before Cara took care of those who shot at him. His target ran for all she was worth down a dusty road heading through the industrial sector, and Din wondered where she thought she was going. If she was trying to get back to a ship, she was going exactly the wrong way to reach the landing fields.

The stranger either had a clever plan in store, perhaps a hidden ride nearby, or she was inexperienced and running without thinking ahead. Tracking fobs would lead the entire group right to her position no matter where she went in this city.

He passed over the corpse of a stormtrooper, then dropped down to the ground behind her as he raised his pistol and took aim at her back, just as she skidded around a corner.

Din Djarin pounded after her, then came to an abrupt halt.

Before him, the street lay wide open, empty of any places to hide, framed on either side by two flat-walled factories that belched black smoke high into the sky above. A handful of workers stood idling about, spread out around the place, all unconcerned and seemingly relaxed.

Something nagged at his senses that told him this was all wrong. He had  _ seen _ her come this way. He dropped his gaze to the dirt, and caught a glimpse of clear, dainty footprints that stood out fresh from the dusty ground before they blended into the mess of city traffic that had passed through here.

“Which way did she go?” he demanded of the first person he came to. The worker startled badly, his oversized coveralls stained with soot. His face, smudged black with coal and grime, made the whites of his alarmed eyes stand out in sharp contrast as the elder threw both of his hands up as if in surrender.

“W-Who go?” the man asked, alarmed. “Didn’t see no-one go, unless you mean Nann?” he asked, and gestured shakily across the street to an older woman with graying hair, hauling a pair of buckets down the road.

Din clenched his jaw until his teeth ached.

“The woman in a blue shirt, carrying a child in her arms,” he growled savagely, and pointed his gun at the fool. He couldn’t fathom why a random passerby would have any sense of loyalty to a complete stranger, unless this was the civillian’s way of staying out of the conflict.

The factory worker let out a terrified whimper as his knees buckled, and he stared up at Din with a terrorized expression.

“I-I don’t kn-know nothing!” the worker stammered. Other people turned to look their way, and one of them gasped in open alarm. No one moved to intervene.

Din cocked his wrist to bring the gun aiming up into the sky as he realized with alarm that the man truly didn’t know. Nothing about his manner or the gut instinct churning in Din’s stomach told him that he was being lied to, and it was maddening.

The sense of wrongness nagged at him again, even as Din dropped his eyes to the street.

Specks of brilliant red blood stood out against the pale earth, and Din’s heart clenched as he wondered if it came from the bounty hunter, or from the child she’d stolen.

How had they not seen her come through? They  _ must _ have, and yet...

His thoughts felt uncharacteristically muddled, and he growled as he charged forward and shoved the errant distraction away. It didn’t matter; the city folk could cling to their detachment, and he would find the hunter on his own. Din Djarin was entirely focused on his objective.

That woman was dead.

Impatient, Din Djarin took to the skies again to track her down, and kept low above the streets.

It took him much longer than he’d have liked to find the stranger. Even though he had sighted the trail of blood several times over as it wove an irregular path between the dusty streets, in the end, he had to rely on tracking the movements of other bounty hunters as they gave chase with their tracking fobs beeping incessantly. Deeper in the city he caught a glimpse of another platoon of Imperial Stormtroopers as they marched after their quarry.

So much for the planet being free of Imperial occupation.

Din had no idea where Cara was, and he didn’t have time to find out as he finally caught sight of his quarry.

He landed on the roof of a house, just as she dropped the hunter who had caught up to her, and Din took aim at the back of her head. The woman hadn’t noticed him, and he waited with barely restrained impatience for her to hold still so he would have a clean shot. It wasn’t the best angle he could sight her in on, and there was a risk if she moved, he could catch the child she now fumbled in her arms.

Din wasn’t going to hurt the child. He’d die before he did.

“You’ll be alright, it’s ok, we’ll be ok,” the woman stammered as she straightened from under the weight of the falling corpse, and finally went still. Her voice was almost melodic, yet strained and over-loud from her hysteria as she wobbled on her feet. Even as Din registered this, his eyes caught sight of the large patch of blood that spread across her lower abdomen, and dripped down her leg to the earth.

Din hesitated to pull the trigger as his breathing stopped, and his heart lodged in his throat from the unwanted indecision that gripped him like a physical force.

The stranger’s eyes were solely focused on the Foundling as she brushed the side of her gun-hand over its little head, and the kid cooed softly to her, entirely unafraid.

Din knew that sound. The kid made it at him all the time.

All this he absorbed in the span of a mere few heartbeats, and Din Djarin’s rage slowly ebbed first into confusion, then certainty; this woman wasn’t the threat he’d assumed her to be.

He jerked his head up at the sound of approaching footsteps the woman had yet to notice, and three bounty hunters lined up across the street.

Din didn’t stop to think about it; they had barely raised their guns at the woman and his child by the time he had taken aim, and pulled the trigger in short succession as each one dropped.

He turned to address the stranger, then swore under his breath as he found her already bolting away. Din looked ahead to where she was running, then sighed heavily and shot up into the air. At least this time, he would be able to put himself directly in her path.

It didn’t take him long to catch her. Din yanked the gun from her hand and wrapped her up under one arm to secure her from running away as he ignored her slurred threat. She struggled weakly against his hold.

“He’s mine to protect,” Din asserted as he glanced down to the child in question, then gave voice to a snap decision, “Now you are, too. Keep moving,” he commanded, and forced her free hand back around the child, instead of removing the Foundling from her grasp as he’d originally intended.

Consequences of his impulsive choice could be dealt with later.

Din didn’t feel right leaving her behind, wounded as she was, and the sound of enemy pursuit not far away. There was a very real probability that he owed the survival of his ward to this stranger’s intervention.

  
  


~*~

The situation wasn’t looking good. They were on the wrong side of town, and the woman Din half-carried, half-dragged along hadn’t gone into shock which was a stroke of good fortune. However, she seemed only to have enough presence of mind to keep hold of the Foundling, and to keep following his orders as he guided the way through the dizzying streets. Her gun he had shoved into his own holster.

Another body joined the rising count as a bounty hunter jumped out in front of them shooting rapidly, and only Din’s quick reflexes saved his newly acquired charge’s life as he hauled her out of the way with one hand fisted to the back of her shirt. She stumbled with a pained grunt, yet remained on her feet.

Din glanced at her as he hauled the woman along, grim.

If he didn’t figure out something soon, she was going to die a warrior’s death from bleeding out.

Engines roared to life from somewhere nearby and out of sight, even as the sound of rapid blasterfire ripped through the air. Din Djarin swore as they came to a dead end. With little choice, he turned and scooped the woman beside him up into his arms, and ignored the alarming way her head lolled against his shoulder as she struggled to remain conscious.

“Don’t fall asleep,” he ordered sharply, and gave her a rough shake. He loosed one hand from her enough to free his wrist to make the sharp, jerking gesture that cued his jetpack to ignite, and grimaced as they slowly lurched forward and up.

“I won’t,” she mumbled, a greatly delayed reaction, her breaths short and sharp.

The jetpack struggled to lift them up, and for several moments Din thought it might not work at all, but it did the job as it expended a ridiculous amount of fuel diverted to the main thrusters.

The moment his boots cleared the top of the building in front of them, he cut the power and dropped down onto it, then jogged over the top.

Contrary to his expectations, the sight that greeted him was a more than welcome one. Cara was riding in a stolen land speeder that had busted one of its four turbines in the back, and sported a fresh assortment of scorchmarks along the side.

“You are much easier to find than I was worried about,” Cara called as Din dropped down onto a fire escape, and booked it down the stairs. “I just had to follow the explosions and bodies. Who the kriff is that?” she demanded as he jumped down the last several feet, then settled the woman and child in the backseat of the speeder. He swung himself in, and braced his boots against the floor and seat as he readied his pistol and popped a fresh cartridge of plasma fuel into it.

“She protected the kid,” Din answered shortly, and kept his balance as the speeder lurched forward.

“You just can’t stop making friends, can you?” she asked sarcastically as they swung around a corner, and rocketed down the street. Three more bounty hunters joined the kill-count as Din dropped them, and he grunted as one of their strikes bounced off his breasplate.

“A nice, easy trip into town,” he observed dryly. From the corner of his visor, he caught the rude gesture Cara made with her hand, and he snorted.

“You just be ready when we blow through the gates, because I’ve got a  _ great _ feeling about reaching the safety of the ship.”

“Ship?” the stranger with them asked. Din spared the woman a brief glance only once he was certain soeone wasn’t going to shoot at them when he wasn’t looking. The blood flow had slowed, and fortunately it hadn’t been overly fast to begin with, but there was still a small puddle of it gathering on the leather seat where she sat. Ridiculously, not a drop of it had touched the child - she held him high up on her chest, tucked under her chin.

“Yep, great feeling,” Cara supplied, and Din looked over his shoulder to face forward. Ahead of them on the street, one line of Stormtroopers stretched out in front of the exit of the town, flanked on either side by a mottely group of mercenaries. He couldn’t fathom all of them to be members of any Guild - not with the way they’d behaved in the bazaar and the ensuing fight.

Din Djarin sighed, then adjusted his footing to face fully forward.

“Full speed,” he ordered, and reached for one of the two remaining detonation charges on his left hip.

“Way ahead of you,” Cara answered. The speeder bucked beneath them as its broken turbine whined and trailed a billow of smoke behind.

Din thumbed the device to power on as he palmed it off its holding pad, than hurled the hefty thing forward with full brute force. It sailed through the air even through the force of the wind of their approach, and exploded in mid-air.

By the time they reached it, the fire had turned into a haze of black smoke, even as blasterfire ripped through the spreading cloud as their enemy shot blindly.

Din crouched down as they shot through, and steadied his arm on his braced knee and one wrist as he shot several of the soldiers the instant the speeder rocketed out of the concealing haze. Then they were barreling through the ranks as Stormtroopers darted out of the way, and one unfortunate soul crunched loudly against the front bumper and was tossed aside and underneath as they barreled through.

“I really didn’t think that was going to work,” Cara commented as she drove down the open lane through the dizzying array of spaceships around them. Up ahead, his ship lay in wait, a welcome sight.

Din wasted no time in shooting at the small group of opponents who had been foolish enough to take up guard by the Razor Crest, and he hopped out of the speeder and ignited the flame-thrower in his right vambrace as Cara brought them to a sliding halt. The enemy screamed and bolted at his steady approach of death, and Cara finished off the stragglers as the flames sputtered out.

Din hit the button on his control pad to cue open the side door of the boxy gunship as he prowled over to the speeder. Cara stood guard with her rifle in hand as he scooped up the injured woman and the child, and carried them both up the ramp.

“Get the door and take us up,” he ordered shortly as he was busy setting the woman down on a crate with her back to the wall. Behind him he heard the soft  _ beep _ as Cara hit the manual controls on the wall, then the sound of her heavy footfalls as she booked it for the ladder.

~*~

It was quiet, here. Sarah blearily looked around at her surroundings without really taking them in. The most she consciously registered was that it was grey, and metal, and it was so very cold. Or maybe that was just her.

She didn’t realize she was sitting down until an armored stranger stepped in front of her, and she was eye-level with his utility belt. She started badly, memories of the storm trooper soldiers fresh in her mind, then remembered that this was the person who had found her in the city. With it came the recollection she’d been with him for some time, and distorted, jumbled memories flickered over her awareness in a tangled heap she didn’t try to make sense of.

Where were they, now?

“You’re wounded. You need to let him go so I can tend it,” the man stated in the face of her silence, and she realized his hands were reaching for the bundle she still clutched to her chest.

That jarred her into action. Sarah scooted back until her calves collided with the edge of the crate she sat on, and tightened her secure hold on the child.

The stranger lifted a placating gloved hand as if she were a frightened beast he needed to calm. She thought maybe she was, filled with such a whirling rage of raw adrenaline and fear and desperate need.

“It’s alright. I’m not going to hurt you - Or the kid. I owe you thanks for protecting it,” the stranger added gruffly.

“He’s… Yours?” she asked, and realized it was a struggle to speak. She was so thoroughly exhausted.

“Yes.”

The calm voice matched his manner, and somehow that soothed her more than what he actually said did. Sarah looked down at wide, glossy black eyes that peered soulfully up at her, large ears lifting. There was the tiniest hint of brown at the edges of his large pupils.

The child wasn’t afraid, and so she finally relaxed her hold. It was difficult - her muscles had cramped up, and the stranger awkwardly extracted the kid from stiff limbs. Sarah watched silently as he moved away to set the child into a small, raised room that was probably a sleeping chamber, unwrapping the swaddling blanket as he went.

“Is he alright?” Sarah croaked, as the man stopped to inspect the child after setting him down. She tried to focus, but her vision blurred out and Sarah closed her eyes against the throbbing ache in her head.

“He’s fine,” came the short reply in the man’s distorted voice.

Then he was walking back, and Sarah opened her eyes and flinched away from the sight of the masked stranger approaching. He moved briskly, then slowed down once he was within arm’s reach, and gingerly lowered himself to a knee before her.

“This is bad,” he observed as the helmet tilted, inspecting her injury. “Cara, what do we have left of the med kit?” he callled over a shoulder.

A woman’s harsh voice, vaguely familiar, answered from somewhere away and above them, and Sarah looked over to see another stranger enter the room down a ladder. Dark brown eyes under a sweep of black hair glanced over Sarah once, twice, then looked away.

“Not much - Some bandaging and gauze, and antiseptic,” Cara answered.

“At least we can clean it. Anything to seal it? We need to stop the bleeding,” the man stated. There was a new urgency to his voice that finally broke through the man’s calm demenour.

Sarah hissed as his gloved fingers gently prodded her stomach.

“I- I can stitch it,” Sarah blurted.

“What?” he asked, his hands not stopping their careful investigation.

“Stitches. Needle, thread,” Sarah elaborated weakly. She was losing her bearings again, and listed sideways as a wave of dizziness washed over her.

“We don’t have the stuff for that,” the soldier dismissed, not even looking her way even as he straightened her with one hand to her shoulder. The other still pressed lightly next to her wound. Sarah batted at it, and though her attempt was weak, he withdrew.

“What about the kid? Might be willing to take care of her. He’s tended worse,” Cara said skeptically. Sarah blinked blearily, and caught the blurred motion as the wmoan walked over to where the little green child sat watching them all, large ears raising and lowering. Cara looked back and eyed Sarah. “Well. Maybe not much worse.”

Shaking his head the soldier said, “It’s worth a shot.”

Sarah wasn’t sure if she was hearing them right, or if their conversation was really just as confusing as it sounded. What could a child possibly do for her that a med kit couldn’t?

“Alright, little guy, c’mere.” The muscular woman picked the child up and carried him over, and frowned severely as she looked down at Sarah. “What’s your name?” Cara prompted.

Sarah opened her mouth to answer, then thought better of it and just shook her head. She didn’t know these people, and defaulted to the mindset that for now the less said, the better.

“Where are we?” Sarah asked instead. If she kept her eyes squinted, she could just barely hold onto her grasp of the immediate environment around her.

“On my ship,” the man answered, still kneeling.

“Are we still on the planet?” Sarah asked, as she watched the other woman sit next to her and settle the child between them. His large, glossy eyes looked first up to Cara, then to Sarah’s abdomen. His ears slowly raised until they were pricked wide and flat as if in alarm.

“No.” The armored man didn’t try to soften the answer, and Sarah wasn’t sure if she felt elated to finally be off the rock she’d been desperate to get off of, or if she should feel cheated it had come in the most unlikely of ways, right when her dreams had been within her grasp.

Mostly, she was just happy to be alive.

“Lift the fabric up,” Cara urged, as a three-fingered green hand - paw? - stretched out towards the injury.

Sarah looked down for the first time as the metal man’s hands carefully lifted her shirt up to expose her waist, tugging it free of her belt, and she nearly choked at the sight. The deep blue fabric was charred black around a large, oblong hole slashed across her midsection, and covered in dirt and grime from her run through the city. Blood made the fabric a glistening near-black, and her pale skin was brilliant crimson. It seeped slowly from a grisly wound drawn across her stomach and side over her left hip, where a blaster bolt must have clearly grazed her. The blood showed up clearly on her pants where it had stained a large patch over her leg with smaller drips trailing down, and quite suddenly she wanted to hurl and pass out or maybe just start screaming hysterically.

Sarah did none of the above, and instead sat frozen numb with shock until the child’s hand settled squarely on her half-charred, half-raw wound, and raised the alarm of pain in her body to a fevered pitch.

She muffled her half-strangled cry behind clenched teeth, and lost grip on reality.

~*~

Sarah wasn’t aware she’d even passed out until she was waking up, swaddled in layers of fabric and securely stuffed onto a makeshift pallet made from piled blankets and an empty duffle bag rolled up for a pillow. The dark-haired woman sat close by on a crate, and noticed when she stirred.

“Hey, how you holding up?” the woman asked.

Sarah stared at her, then closed her eyes.

“I’ll be fine,” Sarah answered hoarsely. Her throat felt raw, and she could still taste the acrid tang of scorched flesh, dusty roads, and blasterfire on her tongue.

She got a scoff in reply, then silence. Eventually, the woman spoke again.

“I’m Cara. The tin can is Mando,” came the conversational introduction.

“....Sarah.”

“You saved the kid’s life. That was a pretty brave thing you did,” Cara stated.

“I just acted.” Sarah felt heat rise in her cheeks. She didn’t feel very brave, just tired, and sore, and - 

She half sat up when she realized she was no longer in excruciating pain, and shoved off the blankets to pat herself down. Her muscles still burned and her head throbbed with a mean headache, but the blood had been cleaned away and the miraculously healed flesh was nearly smooth beneath her hand. She wore no shirt, only the undercovering of a tight gray band over her chest, though her pants remained. The fabric had long since dried, and it clung to her skin in an uncomfortable, grimy sort of way. Every movement made the crusty cloth shed flakes of dried blood.

“What…?” Sarah trailed off, dumbfounded.

Cara’s lips twitched with a small smile as she explained, “Kid healed you. Don’t know how he does it, but you’re lucky to be alive. Infection would have killed you if the blood loss hadn’t.”

“Healed…?” Sarah stopped trying to make sense of it and just accepted the situation. Maybe she’d dreamed it all, but she knew that wasn’t so. The rippled scar drawn in a straight line across her abdomen proved otherwise.

“I hope you don’t have family back there, because we’re not going back,” Cara said bluntly.

Sarah snapped her gaze up to the woman. She didn’t have a mean tone, and part of her appreciated Cara’s straightforward approach. What few friends she had made on the planet were more acquaintences than anything, and she was pretty sure the abandonment of her personal posessions wouldn’t hit her until much later. It was fortunate, she mused as memory stirred, that she’d been in such a rush to leave, else she may not have taken the entirety of her funds with her.

Beyond a few odds and ends, Sarah hadn’t owned much of personal value beyond her ship itself, and what she already carried on her person.

Her only concern now was a stranger’s child she’d impulsively risked her life for.

Finally, she shook her head to belatedly answer Cara’s question.

“That’s fortunate. You know anything about raising kids?” the woman immediately prompted.

“Uh…”

“It could use a nanny. Kid gets itself into all kinds of trouble,” Cara continued, a heavy implication laced through her choice of words and the way she leaned forward a little on her knees, and fixed Sarah with a scrutinizing expression. Maybe even hopeful.

“I--” Sarah found she didn’t have the words to answer her. It was too much to take in so suddenly. She reached for a blanket to draw up over her shoulders, and carefully bunched it over her arms as Cara continued talking.

“And I don’t really do the whole baby thing.” A smirk formed on Cara’s lips.

Sarah looked up as Mando entered, having dropped down from a hatch she guessed led either to an upper level of the ship, or directly into the cockpit of it. Maybe both? “That’s enough,” he began, voice almost curt in its abrupt, short command. “We’re dropping her off at the next port and moving on. She’s not safe with us,” he finished flatly.

“Neither is the kid, but here we are,” Cara retorted, and scoffed. “You gonna play nursemaid while you shoot up every bounty hunter or imperial soldier coming after him? Don’t forget I’m not planning to stay on much longer. I’m not going to watch it for you.”

“I can take care of him,” Sarah blurted in a voice barely above a whisper. The words had been ripped from her throat before she even fully registered what she was saying, and neither of the two bickering strangers seemed to notice.

“At least I don’t pretend to have a nurturing side,” Cara continued. “It sits in a metal box or carrier all day, and plays pilot with the ship every time your back is turned. You’re going to get both of yourselves killed.”

“I’ll handle it,” Mando answered, almost surly.

“I’ll do it,” Sarah interrupted, this time much louder, and caused both heads to turn towards her as her heart clenched tightly in her chest. It was a little eerie being stared at by the man’s helmet - it offered no expression, no hint of who was beneath. Just cold, hard metal.

Sighing, Mando answered, “You’ve done enough.”

Sarah pushed herself up to a sitting position then slowly rolled her shoulders, and winced at the tight muscles.

“I’ve never been a mom, but I’ve done babysitting. For several species. I don’t have any greater ambitions right now other than traveling and seeing the stars. Sounds like I’m exactly what you need,” Sarah asserted firmly. The rightness of it settled over her shoulders like an invisible blanket, and seeped into her chest until her heart stuttered, then accelerated as she struggled to maintain her sense of calm.

Cara turned and raised both eyebrows at the soldier, and Sarah realized that the woman herself was probably one, too. If her bearing and muscular build wasn’t enough of a give-away, the well-used blaster rifle on the ground by her feet and a ring of short bars tattooed around her right bicep was.

He was silent for a long while, before the helmet tipped and she guessed he was looking over at the child, who snored soundly in a nest of blankets suspended by a cozy hammock.

“The last person I hired to look after him got killed. You sure you want that risk?” Mando bluntly stated.

“Not blindly. I want training,” Sarah announced.

Looking her way again, Mando asked, “Training?”

Cara’s smile was oddly charming as she looked at Sarah and reached over to cuff her gently on the shoulder.

“We’ll make a trooper out of you yet,” the woman boasted.

Sarah’s face paled.

“You’re not Stormtroopers, are you?” she asked, wide eyed. She didn’t  _ think _ they were, but now that the thought had occured, she darted a panicked look to Mando’s helmet. It’s design was vastly different from the Imperial troops, yet it carried an uncanny resemblence that was disconserting now that she’d made the connection.

Cara laughed, and Mando simply shook his head. Sarah wondered what his expression was.

“He’s a Mandalorian. I’m an ex shock trooper - I served with the Rebellion. Imps and I aren’t friends,” Cara explained.

“Oh. What’s a Mandalorian?” Sarah wondered, and peeked over at the stranger with newfound curiosity.

Cara raised her eyebrows.

“You’re not well read, are you?” the woman prompted.

“Not yet, no,” Sarah answered, metaphorical hackles raised as she shifted the blankets closer around her neck for warmth. “I left home so I could be.”

Cara shook her head as she replied, “That sounds more like you wanted experience over books. Just think of him as a grouchy super soldier who’s got a soft spot for kids. Most of them do.”

“Foundlings are the future,” Mando stiffly supplied, as if that explained everything.

Cara changed the subject before Sarah could voice her desire to know more.

“You’re not a bad shot, Who taught you to shoot?” Cara asked as she picked up an object and turned it over in her hands. The movement drew Sarah’s gaze, and she flinched at the sight of her own blaster pistol. It looked eerily brand new, with no evidence to tattle on its recent use or the lives it’d taken.

“My parents did. My dad’s a veteran, my mom’s just pragmatic,” Sarah answered hesitantly. She didn’t want to think about the family she’d left behind so long ago.

“Good on them.” Cara turned the weapon around and offered it to her. Not knowing what else to do despite the bile rising in her throat, Sarah reached out and grasped it carefully as if it might bite her.

She looked up to meet the woman’s eyes when she tugged and Cara didn’t let go of the gun.

“First time shooting someone?” the woman guessed.

Sarah could only nod.

“I’d tell you it gets easier, but it doesn’t. You just learn to cope with it better. You did what you had to. You and the kid would be dead if you hadn’t - remember that,” Cara said firmly, then let go of the blaster.

“I will,” Sarah murmured, and turned the weapon over in her hands for a moment to inspect it, before she found her belt nearby, and reached over to holster it. She ignored the blood that stained the assortment of pouches and the dull brown leather as she did.

“Thank you.” Mando’s unexpected interruption startled her - his voice was closer by, and Sarah looked up from the floor to see him holding the child in question. Bleary, sleepy black eyes peeped out at her from the swaddle of blankets, and a tiny green hand reached for her, grasping.

“You’re welcome,” Sarah answered softly, then shifted her weight and stiffly folded her legs into a criss-cross position as she reached up with both hands. Mando settled the kid into her arms, then stood there silently looking at them both as if weighing the picture they made. It made her uneasy, being stared at, and she wondered what he saw. Whatever it was, he took his secrets with him as he turned and silently walked back to the ladderway.

Cara made a soft, breathy sound that  _ almost _ sounded like a short laugh.

“Well. I’m glad to know he’s not going to crash into some meteorite from the kid piloting the ship when he’s not looking. Hard to shoot a gun and play nanny at the same time.”

“Does he have a name?” Sarah wondered, and gently stroked her hand over the child’s soft, warm head. He made a pleased warbling noise, and her heart melted just a little.

“If it does, we don’t know it,” Cara answered with a shrug.

“Guess I’ll call you Greenie for now, then, if you don’t have complaints,” Sarah added, shifting the bundle in her arms to address the child. She wasn’t sure how much he understood, but the kid’s ears perked and his sleepy eyes brightened a little. She decided that was a positive sign.

“Mando might,” the woman commented.

“I’ll ask him about it later,” Sarah assured. “Has he had anything to eat or drink recently?”

“Not since we got off the ship - This was supposed to be a supply run, we weren’t expecting an ambush. We’re heading to a new port, it’ll be a few hours yet. We’ve got plenty of drinking water, though.”

“That’s good. Any idea on his age? He seems older than most children,” Sarah observed. The child burbled quietly at her, and she smiled a bit, and let him grasp her finger. His head turned down to look at her hand as she turned her gaze back to Cara.

“Good guess. Mando said the kid’s like fifty or something like that. You recognize his species?”

“No, but I know who might,” Sarah supplied thoughtfully.

“That’s good. Mando’s trying to find his kin, bring him back home.”

“How’d you two meet? Are you siblings?” Sarah asked, more for the sake of conversation than based on any hunch, which she didn’t have.

Cara laughed, short and harsh, yet it was still a good sound to hear after the thunderous explosions and the shrill wine of energy bolts. Sarah adjusted the blankets around little Greenie as he settled comfortably into her arms, and it wasn’t long before the child was asleep again.

Sarah’s heart melted just a little more at his peaceful, trusting expression.

“Not even close,” Cara answered, amused. “He picked me up on a backwater realm and convinced me to come out of hiding to help him out. I’m going right back to it at our next stop - this is way more than I signed up for. Watch your ass. He wasn’t kidding about the risk - We lost a good man recently. Two, if you count the droid.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. Were you close?” Sarah asked. She wanted to ask for more details, about what exactly had happened, but she didn’t feel right to pry in that way.

“No. He’ll be missed anyways.” Cara shrugged and looked away, and Sarah got the sense to change topics.

“What planet are we heading to next?” she prompted instead.

“I don’t remember the name of it, but it’s got a low population and a high forest density. Good place to go into hiding,” Cara explained, and looked back to her. “Hey - How’re you holding up? Kid mighta healed you, but that wound was no laughing matter.”

“I’m fine, just sore. Could I have some water, please?” Sarah asked, and offered a small smile both to reinforce her claim, and to show her appreciation of the woman’s concern in asking.

“Sure thing.” Cara stood, and Sarah quietly marveled at the raw power the woman’s strong figure exuded. It made her feel like a wimpy twig, and it was probably an apt comparison. It didn’t take long for the ex-shock trooper to fill a dented metal cup from a dispensary in the wall. Sarah carefully shifted the sleeping bundle in her arms to free a hand, then drained it in three gulps.

“Get some rest while you can. I’ll wake you when we land,” the woman stated.

Sarah set the cup aside and nodded at her. “Thanks, Cara.”

“Don’t mention it,” the woman answered, and resumed her seat on the crate.

Sarah laid down on the blankets then rolled onto her good side, and carefully nestled the child in her arms before tucking him into the blankets more securely. She felt queerly comfortable with the warm weight trusted to her care, and decided she liked the idea of being a mom. She always had, but she’d long since given up the thought of having children of her own. Romance wasn’t something she had much luck with over the years, and had lost an interest in actively pursuing it; she was far more interested in a life of travel and exploration without someone around trying to get her to settle down, or juggle secrets around.

Though this might not be her child by blood, it was already difficult for Sarah not to think of him as hers now that he’d been officially trusted to her care for the foreseeable future.

She knew she should have thought things over more before getting involved with this, and she suspected she would have days where she cursed her uncharacteristically impulsive decision, but a greater truth gave her solace; this child needed her, and she had the ability to be there for him. It was as simple as that.

With that acknowledgement, Sarah closed her eyes and drifted off into a troubled sleep, her dreams haunted by twisted images of recent events.

~*~

Sarah jolted from a dead sleep when someone shook her by the foot. It was a smart thing to do because she sat up swinging, and rolled partway over the child to protect him. Cara leaned back and whistled low, clearly amused and maybe approving.

“I  _ like _ her,” the woman enthused.

“...Morning,” Sarah mumbled groggily as she eased off and felt the blanket slide down her shoulders, then looked down at her new ward. Little Greenie was wide awake, and looked up at her with perked ears and wide, bright and curious eyes. He burbled at her, and Sarah felt her sleep-sour mood begin to brighten.

“Afternoon,” Mando corrected. “How do you feel?” The distorted voice came from the side, and Sarah looked to the left to see Mando sitting on a crate, wiping down a gun with a splotchy cloth, his back to her. Sarah sat up and put her own back to the wall as Greenie sat up and silently looked around at all of them.

“Like I got hit by a speeder and dragged behind it for good measure. Otherwise, peachy. Are we there?” There was a static quality to the floor beneath her that suggested they were no longer in motion, and a short nod of Mando’s shiny helmet confirmed Sarah’s guess.

“You and the kid stay here. Cara will keep watch; I’m going to get provisions,” he informed her brusquely.

“I’ve got requests and questions if you have time for them,” Sarah stated, and tried not to sound overly eager. She was desperate for a change of clothes.

“Necessities only; we’re short on funds. Keep it brief,” Mando added, and turned to look her way.

Sarah shook her head as she pulled a thin blanket up to cover her back from view, then turned and grabbed her belt from nearby, and fished out the leather pouch that held the majority of her life’s savings. She weighed it in her hand, somewhat nervously, then tossed the bag at him to catch. She had never been so glad she hadn’t had time to spend anything at the market past a cheap breakfast.

Mando set his gun aside, then shook some blocky credits out of the sack onto his palm. He went still for a moment, then looked at her.

“...Alright, then. What do you need?” he asked. Sarah liked the shift in his posture; almost attentive, in the way he angled himself towards her and his focus seemed to zero in completely. He didn’t hold the credits closer to him like he coveted them, and he didn’t seem overly possessive. There was no hint of greed in his appealing voice, but instead a pleasant softening around the rich baritone she was surprised to recognize through the sound processor of his helmet.

It wasn’t the largest sum of money she’d tossed at him, but it was significant, and Sarah was relieved by his reaction to it.

“Clean clothes, supplies for the kid that he doesn’t have already, and anything else you think we’ll need. If you happen to come across it, paper and a pen. That’s not a need, though,” she admitted, then hastily continued, “Oil for cleaning my gun and knife unless you’ve got enough to share.”

“Whatcha got for a knife?” Cara interrupted, looking her up and down. Sarah bent a leg up and slipped a hand into her boot to withdraw the hidden slim, narrow blade made from one piece of metal. Almost as long as her forearm, it was unadorned save for a red line of inlaid bone on the oval-rounded hilt, and well made. She offered it to the woman hilt first to let her inspect it.

“We’ve got weapon supplies,” Mando said after a moment. “I’ll see what the markets have for the rest, no promises. Any preference on clothes?”

“As unflattering as possible and sensible,” Sarah requested without hesitation.

“What, don’t want to look good in the mirror?” Cara asked with an amused scoff.

“I don’t want to draw more attention than I already do.”

Two heads turned towards her, and Sarah shrugged, then turned away to fuss over Greenie as she settled him on her lap and inspected him. Though his eyes were bright and alert, there was a wan quality to his face that worried her.

“Mind grabbing us some water, please?” she asked Cara, and looked up to accept her blade back. The woman nodded, and turned to fetch it as Mando stood and walked towards Sarah. He pocketed a healthy portion of the credits she’d tossed him, then handed the rest of the pouch back to her.

“Just in case. Never keep it all in one place.”

“I don’t,” Sarah answered. Beyond what she had in another pouch on her belt, there was also an emergency stash hidden in the inner pocket of her other boot she never went without.

“I’ll be back soon. Stay on the ship,” he ordered.

“Roger that,” Sarah answered, and readily accepted the cup of water she was offered. Greenie was reaching for it with both hands even before it was fully settled in her own, and she helped him drink with a soft smile. When it was clear the child could handle it on his own, she left him to it. “Thanks,” she added belatedly, with a glance to Cara.

“No problem.” The woman sat down a comfortable distance away on her customary box, elbows on her knees. There was a pause as both women turned to watch Mando leave the ship, then Cara turned to her as the door sealed shut with a hiss and latching click. “So… Where are you from?”

“I’ve grown up on a few planets; my family were traveling merchants,” Sarah answered. It was easy to give information without really revealing anything specific. She’d had plenty of practice.

“I’m sorry; did they pass?” Cara asked. There was a darkness to her sympathetic eyes as she spoke that made Sarah question if the woman had lost people, herself.

Sarah shook her head as she clarified, “No. Just settled down.”

“So what brought you out into the universe on your own?” Cara’s eyes followed the money pouch as Sarah stowed it away in her belt again.

“I wanted to travel and actually see the planets I went to, without being stuck behind a sales table.”

“On your own?” Cara wondered, one brow quirked.

“Why is that so surprising? Weren’t you by yourself until you met up with Mando?”

“More or less. I just wouldn’t take you for the type. You’re kinda scrawny.” It was said with a grin, so Sarah took it for the good natured ribbing that it was. She huffed.

“I’ll fix that,” Sarah asserted firmly.

“You’d better. I won’t be here to bail your ass out next time. My advice? Keep hounding Mando for lessons. He should know something about training. Call it part of your payment for nanny services or something. The guy’s got a real thing for making deals.”

“I think I’d rather think of it as training  _ for _ my nanny services.” Sarah grinned, and it widened when Cara barked out a short laugh. “You’re high maintenance, aren’t you, Greenie?” Sarah cooed, and felt relief when he finally relinquished the cup. She drained the little that was left herselft, then set it aside.

“More than you realize. The kid’s got a bounty on its head; The Imps want it for something, I’m guessing it has to do with its species and the fact it can… Do things, with its mind or something. Move objects, heal wounds.” Cara frowned as she lifted a hand up to touch her throat as if lost in an unpleasant memory. “Don’t let it kill anyone,” the woman added, voice quieter than normal.

“Uh.” Sarah blinked rapidly.

Cara shrugged.

“It’s a kid. Don’t think it knew any better, but that doesn’t make it ok. I don’t know what it did to me, but I… I couldn’t breath. It was like I was being choked. Mando and I were arm wrestling; I think it thought I was trying to hurt him. Got a protective streak, huh?” she asked, then reached over to boop the child gently on one ear. Greenie beeped at her and made a happy warbling noise, and Cara huffed. “Looks helpless, but it ain’t.”

“Are you telling me this is a baby  _ Jedi?” _ Sarah demanded, utterly shellshocked.

Cara’s gaze snapped to her as both brows raised.

“You know about them?”

“Of course I do, they--” Sarah faltered, unsure how much to say as her heart skipped a beat, then lodged in her throat. “They’re... pretty common in campfire stories,” she explained. “On some planets, I guess. I grew up hearing about them.”

“Uh-huh. Well, that’s good. Mando’d never heard of them, and I thought they were a New Republic myth until recently. I’ll leave the freaky sorcerer mystery to you guys,” Cara announced bluntly, and sat back to fold her arms over her chest in a relaxed posture.

“So… What else can you tell me about Greenie? What’s he like to eat? Does he speak yet?” Sarah asked, eager to change topics, even as her thoughts whirled with the possibilities.

A baby force-user? And both these people  _ knew _ about it, and weren’t treating the child like a tiny terror?

“If he talks I’ve never heard it, and I don’t think Mando has either. Definitely a carnivore - He’ll put anything in his mouth that’ll fit, including live frogs. Seems to like cooked meat just fine,” Cara explained with a casual shrug.

Sarah put off the more esoteric thoughts of great gravity as she leaned forward and sniffed delicately, then wrinkled her nose.

“He needs a bath,” she observed. The odor was slight, but obvious. A slightly earthy, sweet scent touched by the unmistakeable scent of body sweat.

“I’m pretty sure you do, too,” Cara answered.

“So do you,” Sarah retorted, now amused.

“Shoot-outs are sweaty business. Shower’s by the toilet on the left. Figured you’d want to wait until you got clean clothes to change into though.”

Sarah nodded to concede the point, then set her ward aside on the blankets. She looked around for a moment as she considered, then reached for her belt. Ignoring the soot and blood splatter on it and its attached pouches, she rummaged until she found a couple of shiny rocks and passed them to the child to play with. He took them readily, and eagerly turned them over in tiny hands as he watched the way they reflected light. They were large enough she wasn’t worried about him trying to eat them, though she did watch carefully just to be sure as he mouthed one of them.

“You must really like kids,” Cara said after several moments of silence.

“I do.” Sarah smiled as the child looked up at them both, and lifted both ears as if he were listening to them talk.

“It’s lucky to have you. I don’t think Mando really knows how to do the whole care and nurture thing very well. He’s good at the overprotective daddy schtick though.” Cara huffed lightly.

Sarah giggled, more at ease than she was when she first woke.

The two of them proceeded to pass their time in idle conversation, carefully skirting around overly personal questions.

When the door of the ship finally hissed open maybe two hours later, Cara was on her feet with a blaster pointed at the entrance before Sarah could even blink. Mando stepped in slowly with a heavy cloth sack and several canvas bags slung over one shoulder, and the veteran relaxed as she holstered her gun.

Sarah swallowed thickly. That was going to take getting used to, she was certain.

“I’ll help unpack,” Sarah offered. “Tell me what you need done,” she added, and glanced at the child before standing up as she brought the blanket she wore with her. She’d accumulated a collection of odd objects for him to play with from around the ship, and he was busy stacking them up like building blocks. The rocks had been set on top of each precarious stack.

She could tell Mando was looking at him by the way his helmet tilted, and he seemed frozen in place for several moments before turning towards her. He swung the bags down and started shoving items at her while Cara sat back and watched. The woman occasionally glanced between them and the kid to keep an eye on him.

“Food goes in the cabinet on the left. No, the other one,” Mando instructed.

“Got it. Next?” Sarah prompted, and turned around with her hands outstretched.

“Med supplies. Second shelf down, dented door. Don’t tip the canister.”

“Boom, done.”

“This is for the kid. Found some toys; thought he might like them.” There was an awkwardness to his voice and manner as he offered her the ragged bag, and Sarah didn’t indulge her curiosity and peek as she set it down beside her blanket nest. There’d be time to explore the contents and show them to Greenie later.

“The rest here is yours,” Mando stated, and gestured to the remaining big bag.

“Perfect. Thank you,” she added as she knelt beside it, eager to change out of her blood-caked pants and into something  _ clean. _

“Sarah.”

Half startled by his use of her name, she looked up at him halfway through opening up the large sack.

“You should always have a spare. I’ll show you how to use it later if you’re not familiar with the model.” Her gaze dropped to what he held out to her - a blaster pistol, sleek and small and probably just the right size for her slim hands. Sarah picked it up with a grim sort of fascination and delight, and was pleased to find her guess correct; it fit her grip like it was made for her. He had a good eye.

“I’m not,” she admitted. “Does it have a holster or do I need to make one?” she asked, not sure where to set it. She almost put it on the floor next to her, but thought better of it when Greenie’s curious warbles drew her attention. Not a chance. She set it on her lap instead.

“There’s a harness in the bag. You’ll need to make it fit,” he answered, almost gruffly.

Sarah smiled and nodded. “I can do that. Thank you.”

He didn’t answer, but it didn’t bother her as much as it might have from someone else. He was definitely more the quiet type, and she was quickly getting used to it.

Cara spoke up, drawing their attention.

“Right. Unless you need anything else from me, I’m out of here, then. Good luck babysitting,” she added.

Sarah smiled as answered, “Thanks, Cara. It was good to meet you. Safe travels.”

“I meant Mando. I can already tell you’re going to be a handful. Give him hell for me,” the woman said with a not-quite-a-wink as she turned towards the open door.

Sarah heard a soft snort from their armored friend and chuckled herself as she shook her head.

“I will,” Sarah promised, amused.

“Thank you for your help. Take care of yourself out there.” Mando clapped the woman on the shoulder, then stepped out of her way.

“You, too, buddy. Keep them safe.”

“I will.” His simple, serious answer was so assertive that Sarah did a quick double-take at the unexpected intensity to his voice as he spoke.

It made her feel… Something approaching safe, a feeling she wasn’t wholly used to.

“See ya, kid.” Cara paused as she looked down at the little child, then shook her head with a smile, picked up her rifle, and walked to the exit. “Good luck,” the veteran called over her shoulder.

And with that, Cara was gone. The door hissed shut behind her with a grinding of gears and a clunk of metal latches, and then the interior of the ship was dim again as the comparably bright flood of sunlight vanished.

Mando turned to look at her.

“I’ll watch it while you get cleaned up. Shower’s on--”

“The left by the toilet,” Sarah finished. “And that’s alright - He needs a washing, too, I’ll just take him with me.”

“You sure it’s a… He?” the Mandalorian questioned as his weight shifted slightly. Sarah raised her eyebrow, and wondered just how long he’d had the child in his care for.

“Nope, just strikes me as one. I’m not convinced  _ you’re _ a dude either, but I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt.” She teased with a grin.

He didn’t laugh, but he didn’t seem annoyed, either, so she took it as a win. Sarah rummaged in the bag for a few moments before growing impatient, then simply upended the contents on the floor. A pile of mismatched cloth fell out, along with several leather-bound book pads of various sizes. She brightened considerably, though there weren’t any writing implements. As she began to fold and sort things, she realized she was still being watched.

“...Need something?” Sarah prompted as she peeked over her shoulder at him, and met Mando’s gaze as best she could through the inscrutable dark visor of his helmet.

“No. Will that work?” He gestured to the pile of clothes, and she nodded.

“Beggars can’t be choosers, and this is perfect anyways. Wait. What’s this?” She held up an oblong bag with double straps, frowning. It looked like a poorly shaped backpack. Right before Mando replied, she understood.

“Carrier for the kid. Figured you could make use of it until we’ve got a better one.”

“This is great, I was planning on making one. I’ve been calling him Greenie… The nickname gonna bother you?” she asked, and turned her head to take in his reaction.

He was silent for a long moment, utterly still in posture, then the helmet dipped slightly. It was difficult to get a read on his mood, and Sarah resisted the urge to reach out with her mind for a better grasp. In a way, it was almost a relief she couldn’t sense him immediately - she liked being around beings who could control their emotions.

It was less of a distraction to her focus.

“No,” he answered finally.

“Cara said he can move stuff with his mind,” Sarah began in a tone of surprise she was careful to cultivate. She had to consciously work to keep her expression straight, and fought not to hold her breath from anticipation.

“Yeah. Guess that’s unique to his species,” the Mandalorian replied gruffly.

Sarah paused and glanced towards him, then finished folding the carrier and setting it aside as she sorted out the contents of her new possessions. Her heart skipped a beat as she corrected his assumption.

“It’s not.”

“No?”

“Nope. I’ll storytime after a shower if you want, or whenever. I don’t know… Much, but I guess it’s a start. Cara said you’re trying to find his family, yeah?” she questioned.

“Yes.”

He sounded relieved, and she chose not to prod him further.

“Oh.” Sarah paused at a pile of green fabric - Unlike the other clothes which were various shades of gray and brown in roughspun, thin material, this one was of finer make. She knew what it was before she picked it up, but she still frowned at the dress. It was a simple garment, two pieces stitched together with a dart at the back to follow the curves of a woman’s form, and a flaring, heavy skirt. It had no adornment, but that didn’t matter - she knew from experience that plain and simple looked better on her than something dolled up. The fabric was pleasantly heavy and thick. “I didn’t need a dress.”

Mando didn’t give her long to lament the thought of wasted credits.

“The merchant insisted; I didn’t buy it,” he explained.

“You overpaid him, then,” she mused.

“No. I did him a favor a while back. He figured this makes us even.”

Sarah nodded and hummed, then folded it up carefully and set it aside. It would make a cozy nightgown.

“Why do you think you draw attention?” Mando asked abruptly as he looked her up and down. Or, at least Sarah thought he did. All she really had to go off of was the slight dip and rise of his helmet.

“Because I’m female.” She shrugged his question off.

“You’ve got a face that’d blend into a crowd.”

Sarah knew what he was implying even though he was barely tactful enough not to say it outright: She wasn’t ugly, but she wasn’t a great beauty, either. Her hair was a tousled mess of dark brown, badly cut and cropped short just past her shoulders. Her pale skin was smooth, but marred by a few visible scars here and there, particularly on her hands and arms, and an ugly swath of criss-crossing lines she knew were drawn across her mid back. Those, at least, were covered by the blanket. Sarah wasn’t sure if Mando had seen them when tending her injury on the front side of her stomach, but she wasn’t willing to invite questions about it in case he hadn’t.

“Then my methods of personal grooming are paying off,” she answered shortly. “C’mon, kiddo, bath time. Er, shower time. Have you ever bathed him? How long have you had him for?” She reached over the crate and scooped the child up, gently pried a metal can from his little clawed fingers, and tossed it back onto the blankets.

“A few weeks,” he answered after a  _ long _ delay. Sarah quirked a brow as she recognized his avoidance of her first question.

“Ah- _ huh. _ Right. We’ll be out in a bit.”

She tucked the child under one arm, balanced on her hip, and crouched down to scoop up a pile of folded clothes that together made one outfit. She ignored the helmet and it’s dark, ominous visor that followed her movement when she strode past him towards the rear end of the ship - or was it the front? She wasn’t actually sure - and bumped her shoulder onto the control panel of the door.

The shower inside was small and cramped as she expected, though it had a wide table and a deep shelf set into the wall no doubt the perfect place for an armored enigma to store his gear.

Sarah set Greenie down on the counter and made short work of stripping down, then turned to investigate the shower controls. Simple settings from a vintage model that was pleasantly familiar to her. She turned the water on and waited until it was a comfortable temperature, erring a little on the luke-warm side out of caution for her ward, then turned to collect him.

Greenie was sitting on the counter not in the spot she’d left him, playing with a necklace that he mouthed on while he looked around the room. Sarah reached over and gently tugged it out of his fingers. It was a heavy metal skull with two horns curved down beside the face, strung on a thick black cord.

“You’ll have it back as soon as we’re all cleaned up, little guy,” she promised. “C’mere, let’s get this off of you.”

The child grumbled as she wrangled him out of his thick robe, and Sarah carefully examined him. There was a disturbingly discolored patch of skin on his wrinkly, peach-fuzz covered body that she suspected was a bruise, which covered his shoulder and the better part of his collar bone. Gentle prodding and unhappy squeals confirmed her suspicions - he was injured.

Cooing and tutting to him softly with nonsensical noises of comfort, she picked the child up and brought him into the shower with her, her body turned to protect him from the direct downpour. He seemed to like the water, wriggling his fingers in the air to touch the spray that bounced off her shoulders or made it over her head, and being generally very noisy. A peek at his face made her heart melt - the kid was  _ smiling. _

“Awww, like the water, do ya? I do, too. But we can’t stay too long so we don’t waste it. C’mere, let’s get those little feetsies washed.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun Trivia:
> 
> So, I jumped around time for how long Sarah spent on the planet she is introduced on. First it wasn't even mentioned, then it was "yeah maybe she was here for like five years?" then it was "YEAH FIFTEEN YEARS" then I went "wait no that makes n o sense" and so did several of my lovely editing pals, and now it is settled on a cozy three years and all is right in the world again.
> 
> I'm... really happy with the re-write of this chapter.  
> The original one relied WAY too heavily on this being a fanfiction, and the assumption readers would already "know" characters from the show, so there wasn't really any proper introductions for Cara, Din, or Grogu.
> 
> It also began pretty much like five paragraphs before the shoot-out started, with Sarah already in the market and just... there. While I loved that the story so immediately jumped into the action, I really didn't like that the beginning was basically a lore-dump of "this is Sarah and this is her backstory oooh look information." I'm a huge fan of "show not tell," so it was a big thing for me to go in and fix that.
> 
> I also didn't like that there wasn't ANY of Din Djarin's perspective in the beginning. It was very subtle and probably nothing anyone but myself would notice in the original chapter, but all the moments where Din almost kills Sarah in this chapter re-write? They were present in my head when I wrote the initial draft, and I'm really pleased I finally got to show it.
> 
> Man, imagine the plot twist if he'd actually shot her, only to then find out she was just protecting the kid. Guilt trip time, Din. Or he could have just up and killed her, and this 300k+ word romance story gets a whole lot shorter.... :D
> 
> So... hope you guys enjoy! One of my betta readers is someone who hasn't even watched the Mandalorian yet, and she's been invaluable for suggesting fixes to introduce characters.... especially to avoid the fanfiction crutch of not describing things on the assumption the readers already know.


	2. Good Faith

When she stepped out of the shower, her companion was nowhere in sight. She suspected he was up top, and planned to investigate as soon as she’d tucked the little one into bed. He’d gotten sleepy and clingy after being dried off. His eyes stayed shut a little longer every time he blinked. She nestled him into her blankets by the corner farthest from his pile of makeshift block toys, and nudged the crates around until they secured him in a little pen.

Nudging quickly turned into panting struggles as she exerted all her strength to force them to move, once she’d turned off their magnetically locked connection to the floor. It had taken her several moments fussing over their control buttons by each latch to figure out which one controlled it. She put the locks back on when she was done, and stretched.

A final glance around the room confirmed there probably wasn’t anything Greenie could get into trouble with in the time she’d be gone, should he wake up from his nap. Not that she expected him to, but it never hurt to be cautious.

She paused to look herself over, running her hands down the new tunic. It was a dark gray-brown in a thin but comfortable weave. The sleeves were too long for her so she’d rolled them up past her elbows, and its broad shoulders hung off her frame and made her feel tinier than she really was. The pants were much warmer, made of a thick brown canvas with leather patches sewn onto the knees, and fit her surprisingly well. She didn’t bother to don her belt yet - it was still covered in her own blood. At least, she assumed it was hers.

She did stop to pick up her new blaster, boots, and her slightly-less-new-now pistol. With her other hand she scooped up the weapon harness Mando had provided her with, then carried the whole lot to the ladder rung and sat down next to it.

“Am I allowed to come up there?” she called, pulling on the lined boots over bare feet. Her pants legs were easily stuffed inside them, and she drew the laces snug.

“Don’t touch anything.”

“Noted.”

She finished tying the laces, then stood and slung the harness over one shoulder after putting her first gun into a holster secured snugly to it. There was another one she left empty after trying and failing to make the smaller gun fit in it securely.

Muscles protested loudly when she climbed up the narrow hatch, but the stretch and movement also felt good because it loosened things up. Sarah looked around for a moment to get her bearings, then pulled herself all the way out. The hatch had led her into a small in-between space locked between two blast doors, one of which was open.

Walking into the cockpit, Sarah took in her first glimpse of the galaxy around them and the interior of the ship’s main controls. Or probably its only controls. She had no idea how big this rig even was, as she hadn’t gotten to see it from the outside. Well, not when she’d been in a state to remember it, anyways.

“May I sit?”

“Go ahead.”

She plopped down into one of the two spare seats and tested its swivel with her feet, then looked at the array of buttons and levers and glowy, blinking indicator lights. It was as foreign to her as a fish was in a desert, nothing like the far simpler array of controls she’d been familiarized with.

He was silent for a while, then flicked a few small switches and some other thing she couldn’t see from her vantage point, and turned around to look at her.

She dragged her gaze away from the dazzling display of endless stars to meet his gaze. Or, well, his helmet.

“What do you know about the kid?” he asked.

“Cutting right to the chase, alright. About him specifically? I know he’s injured - He’s got bruising on his shoulder and upper torso, and it pains him to have it touched. I don’t think any bones got broken or fractured, or he’d be in a lot more pain.” She couldn’t see his expression, but she didn’t need to in order to tell the Mandalorian was concerned, possibly alarmed; he sat a little straighter and there was an intensity in the air around him she found hard to ignore, even without reaching out to try and get a read on his mood with her special ability. “He should heal alright, but I’ll be monitoring it just in case. He’s sound asleep right now, but I don’t want to leave him down there alone for too long.”

Her companion nodded without interruption, and so she continued.

“As far as what I’m guessing your other questions are… Jedi are old, and pretty much extinct I guess. Most people will probably tell you they’re gone for good, but the universe is too big for that. They were folks who trained under the dictation of the Jedi Order and followed a kind of code of honor for how they used the Force and lived their way of life. That’s what the kid uses when he… Moves stuff.”

“The Force?”

“Yeah. Think of it like… Energy. Raw, unrefined energy. Applying will and focus lets some individuals bend it, makes it do stuff it wouldn’t normally do on its own. It’s life, it’s death. It just  _ is. _ Everyone’s got it, just not everyone can use it.  _ ” _

“Can you?”

“Do I look like a superpowered Jedi alien baby?”

The helmet tipped, and she decided to take a risk. Especially since she got the distinct feeling he was catching far more information than she was actually sharing.

“...Sort of,” she admitted quietly, looking down at her hands and fiddling with her fingers in a nervous tick. “Not like Greenie can.”

“What can you do?”

“Ward things. Misdirect people. Simple stuff, subtle things. Doesn’t work or work as well on strong minded individuals sometimes. No one knows about it, except now you.”

There was a pause, then the soft creak of leather as he sat back in his chair and regarded her with that infuriatingly unreadable helmet. Did he ever take it off?

“Use any of that on me, and you’re off this ship faster than you can blink.”

“I wouldn’t use it to hurt you unless you provoked it. Just as I’m sure you won’t be snapping my bones in half or blasting me into oblivion unless I earn it. Which I won’t.”

He nodded, and she relaxed. Slightly.

“...Can you train it?”

“Him. I can train  _ him, _ a little. Maybe. I’ll do what I can. I’m… Self taught.”

“Do what you can for him.” There was that relieved quality to his voice and posture again, and Sarah dared to smile.

“I will. Cara said he’s a carnivore. How often does he eat?”

“His ears get droopy when he’s hungry. Starts getting fidgety. Never really timed it.”

“Gotcha. So… How’d he come into your care?”

This time the pause was tense, and she wondered if she’d stumbled across a sensitive topic. Just when she didn’t think Mando would answer, the helmet tipped down and away.

“He was my bounty. Didn’t sit right. Later tried to leave him with a farming village he liked, but the Imps have bounty hunters after the kid. They’ve got tracking fobs with part of his chain code, there’s still some out there. Keeping moving is the only thing keeping us safe.”

“Well, those aren’t going to be a concern anymore.”

The helmet snapped up to aim at her, and Sarah shifted her weight. She wasn’t used to sharing this sort of information openly.

“You can... jam them?”

“More like I can hide him. It might not always work, but it’ll be better than nothing. I’ve yet to be found when I don’t want to be.” She shrugged. Tracking fobs only worked from a certain distance anyways, but if someone with one happened upon their location she wasn’t taking any chances.

“Is anyone after  _ you?” _ he prompted, and she amused herself by imagining he had super bushy eyebrows that rose in a comical way.

“No one dangerous. Er. Well. At least not dangerous to us. I just have nosey family sometimes.”

“Right. They’ll be safer if they don’t know you’re with me… And visa versa. I want you to stay low, keep out of sight on any planets we visit.”

“You heard the part about me wanting to see the galaxy, right? I’m not ok staying cooped up in the ship forever. I will literally go mad from confinement.”

“You’ll get off the ship. I just don’t want you mingling too much with the inhabitants. You said you draw attention to yourself.”

She guessed the gist of his next question as the helmet tilted, even before he voiced it.

“Do your Jedi spells not work when people can see you or something?”

“I'm not a Jedi, and it’s not like that. I don’t know  _ why _ I draw attention, I just… Do, sometimes. People like to tell me stuff. It’s just tiring, and I don’t really want to be a social creature when I’ve got a wanted child under my care. I don’t know if they can sense something or what, but I get treated like a curiosity. If I don’t want to be noticed, I won’t be, but it’s not easy to keep that kind of focus up all the time. It’s easier to ward someone else than it is to ward myself.”

“So your powers don’t work as well on you as they do on others.”

“Correct.”

“Huh. So the kid’s probably the same way?”

“Unless he’s just being pragmatic on saving energy to not heal himself, I’d guess so, yeah.” Or he hadn’t, and the bruise she’d seen was the lasting result of a much greater injury. She chose not to voice that theory.

“...How is he?”

“He’ll be alright, he liked the water. Happy baby noises.” She smiled, remembering the scene, then turned her gaze to look out at the stars. She stood up and walked as close to the control panels as she could without touching them to take in the view. “Space is beautiful.”

“You’ll get used to it.”

“Some things I will never tire of. Used to it? Maybe. Tired of it? Never.”

“What skills do you have? I already know you're a deadly shot. That’s a good thing.” He turned in his chair and flipped the switches he’d clicked earlier back into position, and she presumed he was taking it off some kind of auto-pilot feature.

“This and that. Sewing, craft skills - I’ve never done welding though I know the steps to do it. I’ve worked on some machinery. If you can tell me what to do or get me the literature to read up on it, I can figure it out from there. I don’t think gardening is going to be much use on a spaceship. I know basic medical care… But it’s old school. Herbs and sharp pokey things. Useful when you’re on a planet that doesn’t have modern facilities.”

“We’ll get you what you need. You know how to use the modern equipment?”

“Some of it, the basic stuff, yeah.”

“Alright. Know how to pilot a ship?”

“...Not this one.”

“Ever worn armor or fought hand-to-hand?”

“Nope, and nope - I don’t think mud wrestling counts.”

He turned to stare at her for a long moment, then looked back.

“You can rest for the first few days. After that, we start training. I’m not going to go easy on you. You ready for that?”

“I’m willing to do it. Readiness will come with time.”

He snorted, and she smiled.

“Good answer.”

“Do you ever take your helmet off?” she questioned, tilting her head.

He turned to look at her, and she let him see her open curiosity.

“No. It’s against the Creed. No living soul has seen my face since I took the vows.”

“Why does your creed require that?”

“It is the Way.”

“Is it taboo for any armor to be off, or just the helmet?”

“...The helmet. But this--” he tapped the shiny pauldron nearest her, and she noticed for the first time it was decorated with a stylized depiction of some horned beast. “--This is like my second skin. It’s part of my identity.”

“Thank you for indulging my curiosity.”

“I’d rather you understand. We’re going to be traveling together for a while.”

“So what happens if you’re injured? Am I not allowed to treat you?” she asked as the thought occurred to her, frowning.

“I can take care of myself. If something happens to me, you make sure the kid is safe.”

“Speaking of, I’m gonna go check on him. Do you need anything?” she asked, quietly filing away the information and hoping they’d never come to that.

“No.”

Sarah stood and stretched, left the blasters and their shrugged off harness behind, and winced at the stiff pull of her shoulders and thighs through her way back down the hatch. Her ward was still asleep but stirred at her approach and sat up, bleary eyed but awake.

“Hey, little guy. Have a good nap?” she knelt down and scooped him up out of the blankets, then tucked the sleepy robed bundle in her arms and cooed softly to him. She wandered over to the storage cabinet and rummaged about, until she pulled out what she figured was an appropriate amount of food rations that she tucked into her deep pants pocket. Next she fetched the carrying harness for the child, and was pleased to find the little guy fit into it just fine, his head sticking out of the top and leaving him free to look around.

He seemed to like it, snuggling down into the padded fur lining and blinking groggily at her before falling right back asleep. She figured she’d want to reinforce the straps and adjust them for a more comfortable fit, and maybe add a hood option to the carrier to protect the kid from sunlight when they were outdoors. It was going to be much less work than she’d been anticipating for making one from scratch.

Slinging a strap over her shoulder, she carefully made her way back up the ladder and found her seat in the cockpit. Mando didn’t look her way, but she guessed he probably watched her approach in the faint reflection of the glass.

They sat in silence for a while, broken only by the mechanical background noises of the ship’s operation and Greenie’s quiet, sleepy burbles that sounded suspiciously like tiny snores. Way too cute.

“Where are we going?” Sarah asked eventually, watching the stars drift lazily around them while the farthest specks of light never seemed to move. She’d taken to idly massaging the child’s head with her fingers; every time she tried to stop, he’d stir in his sleep with a subconscious protest.

“Tatooine. It’s a good place to learn shooting and to lay low for a while. How effective do you think your wards will be?”

Sarah found herself amused he’d warmed up to the idea so quickly, and more than a little relieved.

“Very effective, so long as I’m not too far away from the child. I’ve never tested them out long-distance before, but I know they do fade over time. My friends didn’t know I warded them, so it’s not like they could tell me when it wore off on their travels.”

The helmet slowly turned to look at her, and she narrowed her eyes at him.

“What?”

“They couldn’t tell?”

“Nope. Nervous, big guy?”

“No. That’s useful.” He turned back around, and she wondered if that was really the truth or not. “How close do you need to be to him?”

“In my line of sight, I guess, not that I plan on letting him get that far away from me to begin with. I don’t have to have him glued to my hip.”

“I’ll see about getting one of the fobs when the chance comes up so we can test it out.” Though his certainty of it unsettled her, it also made Sarah relieved he wasn’t going to pretend they’d never have trouble come their way. That never ended well.

“By the by, you know not to talk about this with anyone… right? I’ve only told you at all for the kid’s sake, and because if you didn’t flip out on him for his abilities, I figured I’d be safe enough with you.”

“Your secret’s safe with me.”

“It better be. I don’t want to be hunted for it.”

He nodded once, then flipped the switches she was quickly becoming familiar with even if she still didn’t know exactly what they did. The child opened his eyes and blinked at the Mandalorian, and Sarah shrugged the shoulder strap off and held him out to the guy. After a moment, he reached up and accepted the swaddled bundle, resting Greenie carefully on his lap and looking down at him.

“He’s really cute, which kind of defies all logic if you think about it. Wrinkly, green, and fuzzy. Like a shriveled kiwi. Adorable.”

The helmet lifted and aimed at her, and she resisted the urge to laugh. Even without being able to see his face, she was starting to recognize the subtle hints of expression in his demeanor.

“All kids are cute.”

“Nope. I’ve seen some  _ really _ ugly babies. But I cuddled them anyways.”

“He likes you.”

“I think we both know who’s his favorite. Cara told me about the arm wrestling match gone wrong.”

“He warmed up to her.”

“I was wondering if you were going to mention it. That’s not something I want him doing to anyone… Unless it’s in necessary self defense. Anything else I should know about him?”

“You know more than I do at this point.”

“That’s kind of alarming seeing as I’ve only known you for, what, two days? Three? I have no idea how long it's been.”

“About the equivalent of three.”

“You’re trying to figure out his species, right? First step to finding his home?”

“Do you know anything?”

“I don’t, but I know someone who might. He lives on Ad’ier, when he’s not traveling. Owns a library, and specializes in the studies of ancient cultures and extinct or very rare species.”

“He’ll be our first stop after Tatooine, then. Can he be trusted?”

“Yes. He’s my brother. Not by blood though, which matters more to me.”

“That he isn’t or you wish he was?” the helmet turned her way again as he asked for clarification on what she’d meant. Sarah shifted in her chair, aware she’d already said more to this stranger than she had to most people in a very long time.

“That he isn’t. Family is family.”

“Most put blood above bond.” It wasn’t accusatory, and Sarah actually got the impression that he approved.

“Blood can _ make _ a bond, but sharing DNA isn’t the same. I have more aunts and uncles of other species than I do human family, and my birth father ditched us when I was little.”

“I was close with my family before the Mandalorians took me in,” he revealed at a moment, more than she’d been expecting him to share. “Now, they are my family.”

“And so’s this little guy, right?” she asked, smiling as she looked down at the child. He was playing with one of Mando’s gloved fingers, making cute gurgle-laugh noises.

“Yeah, he is.”

“Well, I’m honored you trust me with him.”

“You already proved your worth.”

Sarah flushed, and shrugged.

“I’d do the same for any child. Kid’s a kid.”

“I know.” He carefully extracted his hand and handed the child back to her, after tucking his little arm back into the carrier. She wrapped her arms around him and settled into the chair, more tired than she cared to admit.

“What time is it?”

“Late. Go get some rest.”

“What about you? Night owl?”

“I’m not tired.”

She didn’t move to leave, and he didn’t speak again. It was a comfortable silence, especially once Greenie dozed back off and filled it with soft sleepy noises. It had a soothing effect, and she wondered if it affected the armored man as it did her.

“How long does it take for you to set up wards?” he abruptly asked some time later, jarring her from her thoughts. She’d almost dozed off.

“Depends on the ward and what I’m warding. Or who. Sometimes it’s just a thought, sometimes it takes much longer.”

“What can you ward against?”

“I know for sure I can ward against detection. That means radars and tracking, stuff like that. I can fool the eyes watching the monitors, and sometimes the signals their sensors are sending out. Slipping by unnoticed; someone could still see him, but most will let their eyes slid past. Droids are an issue.”

“What if a droid’s got a tracking on the child?”

“Tracking is tracking; its an energy signal being sent  _ out _ to then have information sent  _ back. _ Direct observation is another matter. They don’t think in the same way living beings do - They deal with raw data and strict protocols for what decides how they act and what they make use of. They can pay attention to multiple things at once with their sensors, even if they’re only utilizing a fraction of the data. That’s much harder to sway than the average person’s focus.”

“Try it with me.”

“I thought I’d get kicked off the ship if I did,” she mused.

“This is different; I’m asking you to.”

Sarah eyed him skeptically.

“This should be interesting. I’ve never used it against someone who knew it was being done.”

“It’ll be good practice for you, then; we don’t know what our enemies are capable of or how much they know themselves. They might be ready for this sort of thing,” he added, nodding towards the sleeping child.

“Alright. Well, if you notice me leave the cockpit, come get me.”

“While I’m watching you?” he asked skeptically.

Sarah smiled, and leaned back in her seat.

“Whatever makes you happy. Don’t let me leave the room, big guy.”

Roughly half an hour later and she was cozily settled on her back in the blanket nest, the child sitting on her stomach and making happy burbles as he played with an opaque white crystal.

She looked up with a grin as Mando’s deceptively light steps sounded on the ladder rung, and the Mandalorian walked over to stare down at them both.

“How long?” he asked shortly.

“I left about two minutes after you dared me to. You’re tired; it was pretty easy.”

He stood still and silent, then crouched down and reached out to wiggle a finger at the kid. Greenie held the rock up for him to see, and Mando turned his hand over to let it be placed on his palm.

“What’s with the rock?”

“I collect them. They help with focusing.”

“How’d you do it?”

“I might have suggested that you weren’t concerned about the kid and I, safe as we are on the ship, and there wasn’t any reason to keep watch while you had everything well under hand. Played up your ego and the truth.”

“I don’t remember looking away.”

“It  _ was _ hard to get your gaze off the kid. Shows how much you care for him,” she added fondly, reaching up to gently stroke the child’s head with a smile. “Seriously, you need some rest. I’m not going to count this as a serious practice run. You’re making  _ me _ feel tired and I’ve napped most the day.”

“Can you teach me to resist it?”

“...You mean avoid me tricking your mind?”

“Yes.”

Sarah frowned, furrowing her brows.

“I… Don’t know. We’ll find out.”

He sat down on the crate near her hips, and reached over to gently brush his fingers against one of the child’s long ears. Greenie looked up at him and smiled, then dropped the rock as he lifted both hands and made graspy-fingers at him. Sarah watched as the armored enigma gingerly picked the child up off her, and settled him on his knee.

“You keep saying it’s because I was tired. Is that the truth, or am I just not strong enough in mind?” he asked quietly, so soft she almost didn’t hear it.

She pushed herself up onto her elbows frowning.

“No. Though I suppose I’m not being wholly forthcoming… It’s not easy to do. I’m used to giving half-truths, because people getting to know me is a risk. It’s partially that you're tired - but it’s also a combination of the trust you’ve placed in me. It’s easy to deceive someone who has already granted a measure of good faith. You trust I won’t harm the child, which means you’re not going to panic if I remove him from your immediate sight. You also trust I’m not going to sabotage your ship, kill you in your sleep, or any such nefarious things.”

“So you’re saying I have to distrust you in order to… Counter you?”

“Not quite. It’s like a sparring buddy. You fought with others to train, right?” A rhetorical question, and he didn’t interrupt her as she continued. “You trust your mentor not to  _ actually _ gut you or put you in unnecessary harm’s way - At least I sure hope you do, or your trainer sucks. At the same time, you have to protect yourself against them, because it’s still a fight and you could lose. You need to look beyond the safety assurance and pretend it’s a real fight, while still keeping in mind that they’re not really your enemy.”

“You think the kid can do something like that?”

“Maybe someday. Probably, actually. He’s pretty strong now, but it’s limited. He’s just a little tyke yet. I would not want to be his momma when he hits the teenage years for his species. Oof.”

That earned her what she pegged as an amused snort, and she smiled.

“What else can you do?”

“Mostly things like that. It’s the same technique, I just use it in different ways. I…” She trailed off, hesitant, and was relieved when he didn’t press her to continue. But then the helmet turned her way, and she found  _ both _ her companions looking at her. She sighed. “I feel like I could do more, if… I knew what to do. I learned what I do know on accident, mostly. It was… Second nature. I don’t think I knew what was happening until I was in my early teens. It freaked me out pretty bad at first, then I started experimenting with it to learn more when I wasn’t able to just… Not.”

“Is that why you wanted to travel?”

She smiled wryly.

“Nailed it in one. I really just love to travel, too, but…” She shrugged. “Nowhere really feels like home when you know you’re an outsider. Not for long, anyways. I figure you know something about not feeling like you belong anywhere, but maybe I’m just projecting.”

“I belong with the Mandalorians. Others have asked me to stay over the years, it never felt right.”

“Sounds nice,” she murmured, rolling onto her side. “I’ve got a family I could go home to, but even though they welcome me there, I never felt like I fit in. I kinda always knew I’d leave. It’s not my nature to stay settled. I’d pop in for a few days, maybe a week or two, and then it was time to move on.” She stopped then, unwilling to continue and revisit old memories that now drifted too close to the surface.

“You’re going to see plenty of travel with the kid. So I guess you’ve found somewhere to belong.”

“For the time being,” she acknowledged, feeling oddly bittersweet. It felt too much like saying goodbye in advance, and she quietly hoped there was a much longer journey ahead of them. Somehow, she didn’t think it would be so easy to walk away from them both when all was said and done.

“You mind if I sleep with him tonight?”

The question caught her off guard, and she blinked owlishly up at him before quickly composing herself.

“Go for it. He’s your kid.”

“He’s yours too, now.”

Sarah smiled, more touched than she knew what to do with. The warm fuzzy feeling in her chest wasn’t a sensation she was overly used to, and it was both distracting and overwhelming.

“And I know right where to find him. Goodnight, Mando.”

“We’ll get you a hammock rigged up eventually, this is the best I can do for now.”

“It’s fine, I’ve never liked soft beds anyways. Trust me, I’m not a porcelain doll.”

“No, you’re not.” He stood, tucked the child securely into the crook of an arm, and nodded to her. “See you in the morning.”

“What equates to it, anyways.”

Sarah followed them down and watched Mando settle the child into a small hammock inside the sleeping chamber at the end of the room, and sighed silently as the Mandalorian slid in after him and the door hissed shut.

Her arms felt empty, and her side felt cold, and she hated to think she was already so attached to someone she was going to have to let go. He wouldn’t be her child forever, as it should be. That still didn’t stop her from the pang of loneliness as she bundled herself down into her blankets, just before the lights on the ship went into night mode.

Sooner than she thought she would, Sarah slipped into sleep.

~*~

When she woke it was darker than she knew it should be, and there was an unusual scent in the air - sulfur and soot, and something hair-raisingly familiar that she couldn’t quite place. She sat up in alarm and shoved off the tangle of blankets even as a surge of panic crawled up her spine. Something was wrong.

“Mando? Greenie?”

The ship jolted beneath her, and the crates around her slid haphazardly across the floor. Blaster fire rang loud and sharp in her ears, and she scrambled for her weapon.

Some distant part of her recognized that this was a dream, but the whisper of consciousness was so far from her reach that it wasn’t enough to break her of the illusion.

“Mando!” she shouted, desperate to know of the child’s safety and that of her new travel companion.

“He won’t hear you,” a man replied, stepping forward from the smog. “You’re all alone, now.” She aimed her blaster at him, but with a twitch of his hand it went flying from her grip and into his. The stranger wasn’t much taller than she was, but was still very imposing, silhouetted against the slow blink of the ship’s emergency lights. She could not see his face, but the deep-throated voice sent shivers of fear down her spine. “You are right to be afraid, Sarah. This will not end well for you.” He said in a regretful tone, as if he felt sorry for her.

Pity wasn’t something Sarah was accustomed to, and not something she liked. She couldn’t understand how this person had gotten onto the ship, or what had happened to the child and the Mandalorian.

When the figure began walking towards her, she rolled and bolted, grabbing her boot and drawing the slim dagger from within.

“Really, what do you think you can do against me, here where I am at my most powerful?”

“Who are you?” she demanded, senses straining even as his words confused her. She pushed her aura out, tried to deflect his attention. All she needed was him to glance away, for just a moment, even blink too long, and she’d have an opening.

She screamed as a lancing pain seared through her mind like someone had shoved a rod of hot iron between her ears, seated deep in the center of her skull, scorching her from the inside out. The knife clattered from her fingers and she fell to her knees, gasping through sudden tears.

The stranger tutted and knelt before her, then reached out to grasp her chin in a painful, icy cold grip.

“A shame. I thought you would put up more of a challenge than this. Now tell me; where are you going? Where are you taking the child? Tell me, or I will rip it from your mind.”

“I’m not telling you shit,” Sarah spat, and tried to jerk her face from his grasp. Where was the child? Where were they going? This wasn’t a normal dream, she realized, and fear spiked hot and fresh even as her eyes lit with triumph. Greenie and Mando weren’t even here, which meant they weren’t in immediate danger as the scene her mysterious intruder had meant to tell her they were.

“That’s what they all say,” he drawled, and lifted his other hand to place his gloved palm square on her forehead. She struggled back and he followed to press her back against the wall. He pinned her there by the throat, and squeezed until she thought she would suffocate, or maybe that he would just outright crush her neck with his terrifying strength.

When the pain intensified, Sarah didn’t realize she was screaming until the man clamped his hand over her mouth to muffle the noise as she thrashed.

_ “Tell me where you are taking him!” _ His booming voice echoed in her mind, resonating with a familiar authority that sent chills down her mind as lights bloomed in her fading vision. It felt like cold, clawed fingers were prodding at and trying to rip open her skull, trying to find information deeper than her surface thoughts and the rising swell of her emotional panic and fear. She whimpered as she sought to defy him, all her focus poured into raised defenses as she shielded her mind against this violation. Her captor growled, rebuffed, then raised a hand to backhand her.

She whimpered again, and then suddenly the stranger was shaking her, shouting at her to wake up, that it was just a dream.

~*~

When Sarah’s eyes opened she found that Mando’s helmet filled her vision and her world tilted and swerved from being bodily shaken. Her face was wet from snot and tears, and her breaths came in hitched, hoarse gasps like she was freed from suffocation. Her hands still clawed at him from having struggled to shove him off in her sleep. She stilled, breathing hard.

“Sarah! Sarah, it’s alright, it’s just a dream. Wake up, c’mon, snap out of it.”

“M-Mando?” she gasped, hiccuping as her vision focused. She had a splitting headache and a confusingly vague sense of accomplishment, despite the deep-seated feeling of violation that had followed her into the waking world.

Somehow, she knew she hadn’t given the dream monster anything, and this was important to her even if she already couldn’t quite remember why it was or what he’d wanted. The details of her dream had already begun to slip away with every second she was awake, until she could no longer remember what had caused such terror, only the faintest of imprints that it had happened at all, details maddeningly lingering just out of reach.

She was tangled in her bedsheets and drenched in sweat, chest heaving.

“Hey, hey - It’s alright. You’re safe. Just a nightmare. No one’s going to hurt you.”

“Where is he? Where’s the kid?” she choked out and grabbed his wrists; to steady herself or to emphasis the urgency of her question, she wasn’t sure.

“He’s fine. Kid’s in bed, but he’s probably awake now.” He half-turned his head away as if afraid to take his eyes off her, then quickly glanced behind him. Sarah struggled up onto her elbows until she could see over a crate and spot the dim outline of the child in his little hammock, glittering eyes wide open as he watched her with ears pricked, alert.

She fell back against the blankets, then reached up to touch her throat. It stung, almost burned.

Mando’s entire posture froze stiff, and she recognized a new intensity to the energy aura around him. Then his hands were brushing aside her own and he was opening up the laces of her shirt collar to expose her neck. She didn’t even have time to protest as he pushed the fabric aside, and swore softly.

“What  _ happened?” _ he demanded, gently prodding at vividly bruised skin. He pulled away to tap a button on his arm control pad. The lights of the ship turned on bright and dazzling, making Sarah shut her eyes against it. “I’m going to check the ship. Stay with the kid.”

Before she could say anything he was off, tearing through the ship with a blaster drawn and murder in his steps.

Sarah sat up slowly then stood, and made her way to the sleeping chamber. She crawled inside without hesitation then shut the door snug, picked up the child, swaddled him in her arms, and scooted to the far back wall, breathing heavily. She couldn’t remember what had so shaken her now, but she knew something horrible had happened, and not knowing what to do about it or what it even was terrified her.

She let out a strangled squeak when the door to the chamber opened minutes later, then relaxed when the now familiar sight of Mando’s armor put her at ease. His intimidating figure might instill a sense of danger and fear into others, but for her his obvious lethality had quickly become a source of safety.

“No one else is here. How did that happen?” he demanded.

“I- I don’t know. I don’t remember. S-something happened, and I don’t - I don’t know. Whatever it was they wanted, I didn’t give it to them.” She said the words before they even made sense to her, and now that she thought about it, they still didn’t make sense even though the answer  _ felt _ right.

“Alright. Come here, let me look. It’s alright. You’re safe.”

She hesitated, then slowly scooted forward, aware she was quivering like a leaf in the wind. She held perfectly still, Greenie held securely in her arms on her lap, when Mando gently pulled aside the fabric of her tunic collar to inspect the handprints on her neck more carefully. She tried not to wince, but she was so shaken that her composure was fractured.

“These are too big to be from your hands.” She flinched as he laid his own carefully over her neck, measuring their breadth.

His voice carried a strained quality to it, clipped and curt. It made her feel miserable, because she didn’t know what to tell him.

“I-I don’t know what happened, I’m sorry,” she whispered.

“We’re going to find out. I’ve got bacta spray in the med kit - I’ll take care of this. Sit tight.”

She nodded, feeling small and fragile as he whisked away.

A green hand laid itself on her wrist, warm and comforting, and she offered a tentative smile to the child in her lap and hoped she hadn’t frightened him, though she probably had.

“Shhh, it’s alright. You’re safe,” she murmured. “It’s alright. No one’s going to hurt us. It’s alright.”

Whether she was trying to convince the child, herself, or maybe both of them, Sarah wasn’t sure.

“Hold still.” Mando’s voice startled her along with his abrupt reappearance, and she tipped her head up to offer better access. The bacta spray was cold and tingly against her bare skin, and a few excess droplets dribbled down her neck to soak into the fabric of her tunic. “Are you hurt anywhere else?” He pushed a cup of water into her hands she hadn’t noticed him holding.

“I don’t think so. I’ve just got - Just got a headache.” She frowned, something nagging at her, and then her eyes widened as she lifted a hand up to touch her forehead gingerly and shuddered. “Someone tried to read my thoughts,” she whispered, voice shaking.

_ “What?” _

“I- I think someone tried to read my thoughts.”

“Another force user?” he asked, terse.

“Probably. I think so. I-I don’t know.” She didn't want to know.

“Come up to the cockpit. We’ll be landing soon enough, then we’ll figure this out. Stay where I can keep an eye on you.  _ Both _ of you,” he added, then stepped back to give her space to scoot out of the small sleep room.

He let her go first and followed behind like a too-close shadow, practically herding her towards the ladder rungs. Once she was up and seated in the chair he dropped a blanket on her lap, then took a seat in the pilot's chair and began maneuvering controls to set things back to manual operation.

“Don’t fall asleep until we get there. I’ll keep you awake; tell me if you get drowsy.”

“I don’t think I could fall asleep after that,” Sarah admitted, though she felt tired to the bone as if she’d been running for her life, an unpleasantly familiar sensation. She drained the water and set the cup aside.

“Just being sure,” Mando answered crisply, and reached above to flick something. She didn’t watch what he was doing as she normally would, and instead turned her gaze out towards the stars. When they didn’t offer her comfort or distraction as the dazzling sight usually did, she finally turned her focus to the child in her lap. He was looking up at her, tiny warm hands settled on her wrists.

She offered a wavering smile and tucked him in more securely with the blanket, chilled.

“Thank you,” she said quietly. “For waking me up. And- everything else.”

“You were screaming,” he revealed after a moment, not turning away from the controls.

“Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize. How do you feel?”

“Better. Less shaky. Wide awake.”

“Wide awake is good. Do you think this will happen again?”

She looked away and felt like it was a rhetorical question.

“Not if I have any say in it,” she answered quietly, clenching her jaw. She took comfort in the tiny seed of triumph that had followed her since waking.

Whatever it was that had happened… She’d won in some fashion, and it was an important win. It told her she could do it again if the need arose, and a sinking feeling in her gut told her that it would.

The abrupt realization that her position possibly compromised the safety of her ward made Sarah’s face pale, but she chose not to voice her concern. Not yet. If she was a liability, he’d dump her at the first port they came across - and she wouldn’t blame him for it. But she wasn’t ready for that yet. They needed answers first, and there would be time soon enough to discuss the next course of action.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Crystals and minerals are going to play a large part in this story, because I am perpetually fascinated by the lore surrounding them in the various Star Wars universes (games, movies, comics, books, etc), and I have ideas I want to explore with them. Get used to it :D


	3. Tatooine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's lots of fluff in this chapter. Prepare for the feels. Also, our first look through Din Djarin's POV.
> 
> If you're dying to see any of the story from Grogu's POV... It'll happen, and it's already written. It won't be for a long time yet.
> 
> Also, our first introduction into meeting the Tusken Raiders... I'm excited to share what's coming up.
> 
> Note: I tweaked episode order a bit for what happened in the timeline before this fic takes place. Obviously, he's met Moff Gideon and Kuill and IG-11 are dead. The other thing that's happened is the episode where Din Djarin kills the great Sand Dragon with the help of the Tuskens and that little mining town, and acquired Boba Fett's armor, which now sits in storage on the ship.

Tatooine was her least favorite planet. Sarah decided that as soon as they had entered the atmosphere and she got her first good look at it. They had since landed in a flat, sandy area surrounded by an outcropping of rugged brown rocks, and beyond the small range of hills and jutting cliffs stretched an endless sea of sand dunes and open treks of empty space as far as the eyes could see. Not even a tumbleweed so much as decorated the bleak landscape, though she did spot a few lizard-like critters that darted between rocks and vanished.

“Let me check the bruising,” Mando ordered as he finished settling the ship and spun away from the controls. He threw the harness straps off and knelt in front of her, then tugged aside her collar once again to inspect the damage. “It’s healing, that’s good. You should be good as new in another hour or two. How do you feel?”

Sarah considered telling him that she was fine, but it felt enough like a lie she wasn’t comfortable saying it.

“Pretty shaken up,” she admitted softly.

“You’re going to be alright.”

“I’m more worried about Greenie. I think this was about him.”

“You said you think someone tried to read your thoughts. Trying to get information about the child probably - I don’t understand how they even knew to reach out to you. Few’ve seen you with us, if any.”

“Maybe they ran into Cara and got information? But she doesn’t really know who I am, just my first name and my face.” The very idea turned her stomach; she hoped the woman was alright.

“It’s possible,” he conceded grimly. “I’ll find a way to get in touch with her and confirm, but that’s going to have to wait until I can guarantee a transmission isn’t going to be intercepted. It’ll take time.”

“We’re starting your training today,” Sarah said abruptly.

“What?”

“I said - We’re starting your training today. If they really did try to pry into my mind, what’s to say they won’t go after you next? I’ve never dealt with this sort of thing. I have no idea what to expect, so I’m going to expect the worst.”

“That’s a start. Do you think there’s any way you can find out more? Trick them into one of your own mind trap… things?”

“I can try.” It didn’t feel like enough, so she straightened her back and took a deep breath, and lifted her gaze. “I’ll find a way. But if it doesn’t work - It might be safer if we split. I won’t compromise the kid’s safety.”

“I think he’s safer  _ with _ you. You said your wards work better on others than yourself; that might be why they went after you. If you hadn’t been there, who knows if he’d have been able to get at the kid or I. Did you ward us both?”

She confirmed his guess with a nod. She hadn’t thought about that, and the thought both lifted her spirits and gave her a measure of hope. Maybe she was still of use, after all.

“I don’t want to know any directional information from here on out,” Sarah said, clenching her jaw. It was a lot for her to give up - not knowing. Trusting blindly, without question. She was used to always being informed of exactly what was going on and what the plan was, of granting her commitment in small steps to avoid being pinned under the thumb of obligation. To be able to plan her moves in advance and carefully consider a course of action well ahead of time, to always be free to bail when the environment no longer suited her best interests. This was far more trust than she had been willing to give anyone, but there wasn’t anything for it. If someone was reading her thoughts, anything she learned was at possible risk of being exposed to the enemy. “I don’t want to know where we’re going, or why, or… Or anything. Anything they might be able to use.” She closed her eyes and steeled herself. She knew that was largely impossible, of course, but they had to do  _ something. _

“For now, that’s probably a wise idea,” he agreed. “You’ll have to trust me.”

She opened her eyes and met his gaze as best she could, and saw her own reflection look back at herself in the darkness of his visor. She didn’t like how frail she looked. Was her face always so wan?

“I trust in your resolve to keep the kid safe.”

“That’s not good enough. You’re not just a tool to be used and discarded, Sarah. I’m resolved to keep you safe. You’re  _ both _ under my protection.”

“I don’t really trust anyone.” It came out as an unintended whisper, and she dropped her gaze, feeling a strange sense of shame. She should be able to trust him. She  _ needed _ to trust him. She was pretty sure she already trusted him more than she had anyone beyond her closest kin - more, even, since not even they knew her most closely guarded secrets.

“Listen to me.” She did so when he picked up her hand, clasping it tightly in his firm grip. His were unexpectedly warm even through the leather of his gauntlets, pleasant against her cold fingers. “I  _ will _ protect you. I will always have your and the kid’s best interests at heart. This I vow, but in return, I need your complete trust. If this is going to work, your faith in me needs to be unshakeable. I’ve never dealt with this kind of sorcery before, but I know mind games. The enemy gets inside your head, tries to make you doubt yourself, doubt those around you. Makes you unable to discern what’s real and what’s born of fear. You  _ cannot _ fall prey to that. Do you understand?”

She felt pinned by the intensity in his voice and by the eyes she could not see.

“You swear?” she asked softly as her stomach turned over.

“On my honor and my life, I swear it.”

She gently tugged her hands free and reached down into her boot to draw her knife. Before she could think about the coming pain or the Mandalorian could question her, Sarah slashed it across her left palm and left a thin, shallow slice. Blood pooled, and she turned the hilt of the dagger towards him.

Mando was frozen stiff for a moment, then jerked into motion as he divested himself of his left vambrace and yanked off the glove. She hadn’t really been prepared to see his skin even though she’d made the obvious demand, and she quietly filed away the new detail learned about her enigmatic companion. He had a light skin tone a shade darker than her own, one she imagined would be a few shades deeper from sun exposure if he was not covered head-to-toe at all times. Definitely human, as she’d guessed.

He drew the blade across his palm then clasped his hand in hers, grip shockingly warm and filled with a steady, sure strength she found reassurance in.

As the blood mingled, Sarah made her part of the pact.

“I place my trust in you; my unconditional faith is yours. By blood and honor we are bound in this Oath. I grant you my loyalty and my honesty. Ask, and you shall know.” An unseen yet familiar warmth suffused her and made Sarah’s heart stutter when she spoke, the unmistakable weight of her part of the binding.

He’d already sworn, and so she didn’t give him a chance to question if he’d need to do so again. She loosed her grip and made to withdraw her hand away, but he held on tight. Caught by surprise, she waited to see what he’d do next. It was several moments before the Mandalorian spoke.

“You have my trust, you have my word. By honor we’re bound, and by blood we’re joined; A clan of three. Will you accept this place of belonging?”

His request startled her, and stirred something deep in her chest that made Sarah’s heart flutter. A queasy, nerve-wracking anxiety that wasn’t all-together unpleasant welled up in equal proportion to a wash of happiness. She realized belatedly exactly what he was offering her; it was more than just a place of belonging, or an offer of claimed kinship. He was offering her the same trust and faith she promised to afford him, and she thought she knew enough about this effective stranger to understand the gravity of it. She already thought she knew how much he valued his adoptive family and the place they’d granted him.

“I’d be honored,” she managed to choke out, her throat constricted by an unnamed emotion.

Both of them looked down when a little green hand joined their own, warm fingers patting over their taught knuckles. A happy baby burble brought a smile to Sarah’s lips.

“This is the way.” There was a finality to the words as he spoke them that ended the intense moment.

“Wait. Am I a Mandalorian now or something?” she asked, mildly alarmed at the thought as her head jerked up, and she wondered if she’d just committed to far more than she’d assumed. There was no way she was staying stuck inside a helmet for the rest of her life.

“You’re a member of my clan. You are not sworn to the Creed, so you are not Mandalorian. But you are family now,” he explained gruffly, and finally released her hand.

She watched as he fetched a small vial of bacta spray from a belt pouch, and obeyed the silent command to turn her palm over for him to spray it down.

In a matter of moments, a thin scar was all that was left amidst the fresh blood. He tended his own fresh wound, then packed away the sprayer.

“Stay here. I’ll be right back.”

“...Alright,” she agreed.

In short order he returned and tossed her a rag to wipe her hand off with. She’d since returned her knife to its sheath, having cleaned the small smear of red on a discreet corner of her tunic.

“So… What next?” she asked and flexed her fingers.

“Food, water, then we get started.”

“Alright.” She stood up and adjusted the child in her arms. “I’ll get the kiddo settled. Time to check out what toys your dad got you, eh?” she cooed. She could feel her companion’s gaze on her, but it was becoming easier to not be unnerved by the silent, still regard of his hidden face. Especially after their recent pact, she reminded herself she simply had to trust him. His regard was not a threat to her.

So she put it out of her mind and made her way to the hatch, carefully slipping down and bringing Greenie over to the effective play-pen her bed had come to serve as during the daytime. While Mando portioned out food and drink, she settled the little one down and dumped out the bag of child toys. Block figures and small trinkets, a rattle-looking thing and something soft and cuddly. She set the entire lot out for Greenie to play with, then added his collection of scavenged block toys. She kept back the rocks and crystals she’d previously allowed him to make use of, and sat criss-crossed in front of him holding the largest of them in her palm, which was a thick-veined, opaque white quartz.

Meditation was easy to slip into, and calming as she focused her intent. To protect the child from eyes who watched, and from senses that searched. To deflect the touch of another’s hand, to guide their attention away from taking notice. She’d laid her intentions of warding around her companions directly, but this one was stronger, more focused, more powerful. She trusted it would remain in place for some time, even if she was indisposed of.

When it was done she set the crystal beside the child, then stood and dusted herself off. She felt vaguely lightheaded, like she might float off.

She turned to find Mando watching her in silence, holding a small metal box tray with unappetizing looking food rations and the familiar dented cup of water.

“Are you going to eat?” she asked and accepted it, then settled down on the floor with a crate to use as her table.

“I will when we’re done.”

She portioned out part of her meal for Greenie. Though she would normally feed him first, she woofed down her part in order to grant the child more time to eat and free herself faster for training. She handed the kid the box and the accompanying spoon though she suspected he wouldn’t use it, drained the cup of water to wash her meal down, then refilled it and set it in easy reach of Greenie.

“Where do you want to do this?” he asked.

“In here is fine. We can face the heat as an added distraction later. Foundations first.”

“Tell me what you want me to do.”

She smoothed her shirt and faced him, and looked the warrior up and down with a critical gaze, frowning in thought. She had never trained someone before, but she felt like she should be able to. This felt natural. It felt  _ right. _

“You are not going to let me walk past you. You will stop my advance and prevent me from reaching the other end of the ship. That is your task above all else from here on out. We’ll start by assessing your natural fortitude and your ability to resist suggestion.”

She paced a circle even as her thoughts whirled with ideas and scenarios, of how to trick him and make her way past. Starting with the first of clever ideas, she removed a rock from her belt, which she still needed to clean. It was a dark one, a deep, shimmery purple with thin silver veins streaking through in jagged lines.

“I’m going to set this over there for you to protect, something to keep your focus on,” she announced, and walked towards the other end of the ship. He watched her move, and as she made to step past him, an arm suddenly blocked her path with his palm spread wide and flat and pressed against her hip. Sarah smiled. “That’s a good start. I haven’t brought the mind tricks into play yet, but now you should have an idea of what sort of thing to expect. Next time, I will be doing a more intimate suggestion.”

“...Intimate?” he repeated, sounding uncharacteristically wary.

“Uh. Not - Not like  _ that. _ I mean, intrusive. Though...” She frowned, suddenly uneasy. “Nevermind. That’s something for a later topic. Now, if you’ll just let me set this down, we’ll get started.” As she spoke, she let her aura flare, instilling the suggestion and willing it to reach him, imagining his arm dropped to let her pass.

He half turned as if to let her go, then instead plucked the rock from her hand.

“I’ll do it.”

Sarah smiled innocently at him, and watched as the Mandalorian set the crystal on the far end of the ship before he returned.

“Wonderful. Now that that’s taken care of, it’s time to eat,” she declared, tugging at that thread of hunger she suspected he was hiding. She’d hadn't managed to see when he set the time aside to eat and drink, though she hadn’t really tried that hard to. That said, Sarah was confident that he hadn’t eaten yet today - he’d been in her constant presence since waking her up.

Five minutes later, Sarah was sitting at the end of the ship both disappointed and smug. Disappointed, because she’d really been hoping he would have lasted a little longer, and smug because she couldn’t help but feel a thrum of pleasure at her successful diversion of one so capable. She had faith in his skills, and in her own ability - and so she had to think that it was her own prowess and not an inherent weakness on his part that allowed her to slip past his guard so easily.

She counted the time for him to notice the situation, and was pleased it did not take him nearly as long as it had the day he’d first challenged her. After only a few minutes, she had a stoic Mandalorian standing in front of her with his arms folded. She suspected he was at least not hungry anymore, or maybe he’d realized his mistake before he actually started eating up in the cockpit he’d vanished into.

“How?”

“You’ll learn that later; you won’t have the benefit of understanding an opponent if someone else comes after you with this. For now, focus on honing your own ability to dissect how I did it on your own, and recognizing it even happened.”

He inclined his head, and simply said: “Again.”

Greenie was sound asleep in the middle of his strewn toys by the time Sarah was ready to call it quits. She’d snuck past Mando more times than he’d prevented her trespass, but he was showing astute progress.

She decided to end things on a positive note, and waited until the next time he caught her sneaking past. She was half a step beyond him when an arm snaked around her waist and hauled her around, pinning her to his armored chest. He’d learned to take a more hands-on approach early on, after she’d proven she could immediately move right into countering his counter.

“You’ve tried that before,” he observed. “Trying to make me think I’m more tired than I really am.”

“Very good,” she praised, and patted the forearm that trapped her. “And we’re calling it done for today; officially, not a trick, on this you have my word. That’s enough training for today. Tomorrow, we’ll work on harder tasks. Can you recognize when I am planting suggestions in your mind?”

“...At times. It’s not obvious.”

“Something I’m proud of.”

“I’ve thought about something. When we’re doing this - Do you remove the wards you’ve placed?”

“No. They’re my wards; I can come and go through them freely. They know me as the forest knows the deer and forbids the hunter grace. Protection remains in place even as we train.”

“Good.”

He let her go, then strode past to collect the crystal at the end of the room and returned it to her on his way to look down at the child.

“You should sleep with him again tonight,” Sarah said quietly, coming to stand beside him. “I’m pretty sure I thrashed around last night. I don’t want to risk hurting him.”

“I’ll be keeping watch.”

She looked up at him and frowned.

“Not all night. You need rest, too. Your mind is easier to trick when it is tired, and it’s going to affect the speed of your training. I don’t think we can afford to spend months on the basics alone.”

“No, not all night. But I’ll be close at hand; I’ll leave the door open.”

“Thank you,” she murmured, more relieved than she cared to admit. “I’m going to set additional wards through the crystals. I already made one for Greenie. You and the kid should be safe; I’m more worried about making sure my own can’t be shattered while I’m asleep.”

“Is there anything I can do to help?”

“If I think of something, you will know.”

He nodded, then bent down to collect the sleeping child. His eyes opened a peep as he was scooped up, and he made a soft, sleepy cooing noise before they shut again as he was tucked into Mando’s secure hold.

“Goodnight.”

“Goodnight, Sarah.”

It didn’t take her long to go about her night routine, taking care of basic hygiene and making sure a cup of water was within easy reach for the morning in case she woke up parched. She tried not to think about how she woke up the previous night, and instead settled herself on the blankets to meditate. She focused all her attention on weaving a web of intent around herself, her companions, the ship they dwelled within, a reflective dome to refuse entry to one who pried. She layered chants in her mind over each other until they became an indistinguishable melody of unearthly song, resonating with the crystals she had placed in the corners of her pallet. When she could do no more, and before she exhausted herself controlling so much flow of energy, she severed herself from the weave and opened her eyes.

When she went to sleep, she felt at peace.

~*~

Against his worries, Sarah’s peaceful slumber held steady. He knew she had not been asleep for terribly long when the first attack had occurred, and so he gave it a little over four hours before finding his own light rest. The Foundling was sound asleep in his hammock, safe and comfortable, and didn’t stir as Din Djarin quietly slid into the sleep rack. It was cooler with the door left open, and it came with the queer sensation of feeling exposed. It was tempered by the trust he had placed in the woman who had somehow so quickly earned it.

He had in the beginning thought perhaps she had used one of her mind tricks to wrestle such strong loyalty from him, but the more he paid attention to her the less he believed that theory. It boiled down to the moments in which he’d first seen her, before she ever knew of him; standing in the midst of heavy fire with his Foundling in her arms and a gun taking down those who would do him harm.

He’d lost sight of her for a time after that, and had only managed to find her again by taking to the sky and scouting the streets from above. Storm troopers had followed her deeper into the city, and he’d led them off her trail until finally catching up when she was cornered by bounty hunters.

Half-delirious from blood loss and pain, he had been impressed by her fortitude and perseverance. He remembered thinking she would die a warrior’s death, and had been both relieved and surprised by her survival. If it hadn’t been for the kid, he had a feeling she might not have made it.

After that, he couldn’t say what it was about her that captured his regard, but he felt it had to do with the genuinity of her actions. Though she was clearly someone used to clever tricks and weedling loopholes, she did not strike him as a dishonest person. Her care for the child was unquestionable, and as the Foundling was his priority, that had been the basis of much of their relationship. Cara had been right; the kid needed someone to provide a more thorough care than he could on his own. Her presence meant he could focus fully on ensuring the child’s protection… And hers as well.

Such thoughts tumbled about in his head as he waited for sleep to find him. He slept in his armor, an act more common than not, though it was not usual for him to leave the helmet on.

In the dark he lifted his hand up to the visor, the digital screen allowing him to see the outline of his palm and fingers. Heat tracking sensors were off, and so what he saw was what his own eyes could discern through the lense of night vision. Din Djarin flexed his fingers, remembering their Oath.

A tightness in his chest made him grimace, because he knew it was not something he could easily ignore. He had trusted few in his lifetime, and most of them were either of the Creed or long since dead; the family he had loved as a child and still held fond and bittersweet memories of to this day.

Some had earned his trust over the measure of years, while a precious few had hit it off right from the start in the case of a few Mandalorians. Yet he could not place a proper comparison of those relationships and that of whatever it was he shared with Sarah. It was too new, too intense, too unexpected to make real sense of.

He dropped his hand and looked to the sleeping child that had become the crux around which his life now revolved, the child who had brought such drastic change to everything that had been before. Already he could barely remember what it was like before the Foundling had come into his care.

He wondered what the Forgemaster would think of the latest addition to his tiny clan. It was unorthodox, he was certain, but not strictly taboo. She’d already proven her worth, and her strange talents were an immeasurably priceless asset to his unique quest. The Foundling needed her.

And yet, it was also something more than that. He had meant it when he told her she was not a tool to be used and disposed of, which he had gotten the sense she either felt herself to be or was worried she would be treated as. Something in her demeanor and the way she presented herself had led him to suspect that, and the stricken expression on her face when he’d spoken it had confirmed his hunch.

When morning came, Din’s first thoughts were to check on the status of both his wards. The child still slept soundly in his hammock, and he found Sarah curled up on her side in a tangle of blankets, her choppy hair a tangled mess of bedhead he found amusing to witness.

Unwilling to take chances, and needing to assure himself of her wellbeing, he stepped over the crates that framed her bed and knelt down to shake her shoulder gently.

“Sarah.”

She stirred, and this time didn’t wake up swinging as she rolled over onto her back to blink blearily up at him.

“Nn. Morning, Mando. Guess we got through the night in peace.” Her relief was palpable.

“...Din Djarin,” he answered softly.

“What?”

“My name. It’s Din Djarin. Family knows it, outsiders don’t.”

Her expressive eyes widened a fraction, then a charming smile lit up her face.

“Am I allowed to call you Din in private, then?” she asked. Something twisted inside him, and he was glad she was unable to see his expression as he offered only a simple nod. Her smile widened, then she yawned. He stood, and she patted his leg once as she spoke.

“My full name is Sarah Aidak Skolesky. It’s not really a  _ secret, _ but I don’t choose to give it out.”

He filed the information away and offered a nod to show he’d heard, then stepped away to check exactly what time in the cycle it was.

Earlier than he’d thought, and he almost offered her the choice to go back to sleep, but the woman was already up and moving. She collected her rock trinkets and made for the shower room.

When she returned she was freshly washed and wearing the green dress the merchant had provided her, and his gaze lingered on her longer than he’d meant to. It fit her well. She checked on the Foundling and confirmed he was still sound asleep, then turned to face him with a mischievous sparkle in her eyes that instantly put Din on high alert.

“For sanity’s sake, I want to draw up some boundaries for training. I’m not going to play tricks on you - intentionally - unless I’ve explicitly told you that training is at hand or you request it as a challenge. Likewise, I will not use an announcement of training being over as a ruse. All bets are off for anything else I say between those things, though you will still have my honesty. The worst deception comes in the form of truth and misdirection.”

There was a haunted quality to her gaze as she spoke that brought questions to the forefront of his mind, but he refrained from prying.

“Sounds good to me. When do we start?”

“Not until you’ve eaten an actual breakfast and the child is awake,” she answered, and walked towards the cabinets. He watched her as she passed, wondering at her choice of garb. He had a suspicion of why she’d chosen to wear it, and he wasn’t sure he liked it.

He was more concerned at the unbidden thought that he maybe didn’t  _ dislike _ it, either.

Morning routine was done in short order, and it was only a little over an hour later that the Foundling - Greenie, as Sarah liked to call him - was awake and active. She set him to play after ensuring he’d had a proper breakfast and an inspection of how his bruise was healing, calling Din over to show him firsthand.

“You know, I can’t see your face, but even still I can sense your anger,” she’d said quietly. “So can the child.”

“Does it frighten you?” He turned to meet her gaze. Her sharp eyes missed little; at times he wondered if she could see right through his visor with her piercing blue gaze, a disquieting notion.

“No. On the contrary, it makes me feel safer in your presence because I know the anger is on his behalf, not directed at us. I think it is the same for little Greenie. You know who cares about you, don’t you little guy?” she crooned, turning to fuss over the child with that soft smile she reserved just for him.

The reaffirmation of her trust was an unexpected balm the Mandalorian hadn’t known he’d needed.

When they were ready to begin training, Din Djarin had his suspicions confirmed in the most unexpected of ways. She explained to him that she intended to trick not only his thought process, but his eyes this time. It would be a more obvious method she had explained, because he knew already how she was supposed to look. The key would be to determine how to tell the difference between what he knew to be true and what was illusion - and then to recognize the subtle tell-tale signs of the deception so he might notice it from another.

He wasn’t quite sure what to expect, but when she announced the training begun and vanished into the shower room, he waited patiently at his assigned post. She’d placed the purple crystal back on the other end of the ship, and assigned him the objective to prevent her from touching it.

When she stepped back into the room, he could not help but stare in both fascination and bewildered alarm. The woman he looked at was both Sarah - and not. She walked with a familiar gliding grace, but her dark hair was worn long and unruly with thick, luxurious waves drifting about her exposed neck in a loose cascade. Her dress had a subtle glamour to it, he was certain, because he couldn’t remember it drawing quite so much attention to her curves or the delicate creamy shade of her now unblemished skin.

She was beautiful, more so than many women he had crossed paths with, and her soft smile was touched by an alarmingly sensual charm. He wasn’t sure how he was supposed to tell the difference between illusion and reality when the visual was so unnervingly close.

Sarah strode purposefully towards him with attractive confidence, unhurried and unconcerned. She held his gaze and reached up to place a hand on his chest, which he quickly caught before she could make contact. Unsure how to react to this dramatically different side of her, he waited to see what she’d do next.

“I’ve been observing you, you know. As I know you’ve been watching me,” she murmured, smiling as she turned her hand in his hold to lace her fingers with his. He wasn’t entirely certain how she’d managed that, and his heart leapt into his throat. They felt delicate and small between his thick, calloused fingers more used to handling weaponry than this gentle contact. He was glad he had on gloves.

He was in serious trouble.

“You took a vow to never show your face to another living soul--” for the briefest of moments, he wondered if she would try to wrest him into breaking that vow, but quickly dismissed it. She knew the importance, even if she did not understand it. He had to trust her in that. It was not easy. “--So I can only imagine that you’ve never been with anyone...  _ Intimately,” _ she murmured, reaching up to tuck a lock of hair behind her ears.

“No,” he answered without meaning to, then rallied against her charms. This was a test. A  _ test. _ And illusion - she’d warned him of that, and yet there he was, falling right into her trap.

He drew on a piece of advice she had given him yesterday: _ “The best way to cut through an illusion or deception is to move with it, rather than against it. When you willingly direct your own path amidst the terrain, you maintain a measure of control. When you attempt to ford a river by brute force alone, its undertow will continue to fight you until it exhausts and pulls you under before you even know what’s happening.” _

So he lifted his free hand and swept the hair back from her face. For the briefest of moments she looked startled, perhaps even alarmed, and he recognized the difference between her acting and her objective.

_ ‘Though you will still have my honesty.’ _

The words struck him out of the blue, and he wondered if it was his own mind drawing up the memory of her promise, or if it was a suggestion she had placed there. He had quickly learned how thoroughly she could weave a net of thoughts and suggestions, and guide his mind into drawing connections between seemingly innocent actions on her part to create a larger narrative that extended well throughout their entire training session.

But discerning the truth behind her ruse wasn’t his objective; he already knew her goal, which was to slip past his guard and claim the prize. He just had to keep his head and his awareness, and prevent her success.

“I didn’t think you had any interest in this sort of thing,” he said, wincing at the unexpected hoarseness of his voice. “You’re not the first to try and charm me.”

“And I won’t be the last. Men in uniform have a certain… Appeal,” she admitted, fluttering her lashes at him. “Could I beg a favor, if you won’t indulge my desire?” she questioned, canting her head in such a way that it exposed the smooth line of her neck and offered an appealing view of the low sweep of her neckline. It was modest, and yet he had grown so used to seeing her in baggy, covering clothes that it felt almost indecent to see so much of her fair skin on display, innocent though it was. Heat rose in his cheeks.

He wondered if this was a bad idea.

In the next moment, he shook the doubt aside. This wasn’t a risk; this was training against it. The objective was clear, and he trusted that his honor was safe with her. Even if she managed to trick his mind, a thought that was as exciting as it was alarming, she’d stop before things grew out of hand.

_ ‘You’d like things to get out of hand, wouldn’t you?’ _ came the unbidden thought, making his throat go dry. Panic surged.

“What sort of favor?” he asked, Adam's apple bobbing beneath his suddenly too-tight collar.

“Something simple, nothing scandalous as I’m sure you're dreading.”  _ Or hoping for. _ “I wouldn’t  _ dream _ of asking a man of your quality to… bend the rules.” She smiled suggestively, slow and calculated, and he had a vivid flash of imagery in his head that made the heat rise high in his cheeks and his knees nearly buckle. He hastily shut the thought away, and barely caught what she said next. “I want to spend time with you. Walk with me?” she asked, offering an arm.

He saw his opportunity, and he took it.

In silence he tucked her arm through his, then before she could move took control of their path, escorting her towards the ladder rung. Every step was an uncomfortable torment.

“Ladies first,” he offered. The chivalrous offer was ruined by his curt tone.

“Not a chance, I’m in a skirt,” she huffed, half amused and half embarrassed, and he was surprised to see her illusion flicker. One moment she was a great beauty captivating his attention despite his best efforts, and the next she was just normal Sarah, with choppy hair and a smudged face he wasn’t inclined to tell her about because it definitely didn’t matter to him if she had a smear of weapon grease on her nose.

As he turned to climb up, she abruptly clapped her hands and let the illusion go completely, though her face was still a brilliant red, and she seemed unable to look him in the face, turning her gaze to anywhere but him.

“Right! You pass test one. You didn’t let me get you to take me closer to the quarry, and you actually blocked a few suggestions I threw your way. That’s a vast improvement over yesterday. Good use of misdirection. I am so glad you have that helmet oath, because I really don’t want to have to worry about you being seduced by some gross bad guy. Girl. Whatever. No scandalous kissing for you.”

“No,” he agreed, and decided to ignore the husky quality of his voice. If she noticed she didn’t comment, and instead gestured for him to return to his starting position.

She was flustered, he realized, and Din wondered if it would affect the integrity of her own lesson. On impulse, he indulged a simple curiosity that doubled as part of the challenge she had posed him with; until she announced the training was officially at an end, every moment of time spent could be a test and demanded he use his wits to outmaneuver her. She could be acting even now.

“Have you seduced anyone like that before?” Wide blue eyes darted up to him as if startled, and he resisted the urge to laugh at the comical expression she wore.

“I- No! Of course I haven’t.  _ Ew. _ The  _ only _ reason I’m doing this at all is because you’re a male under high stress in a dangerous line of work who’s probably never bedded anyone in his life, and the allure of.. Of… That sort of  _ thing _ has been the downfall of far lesser folk. Trust me, I have no desire to sleep with you. I  _ definitely _ do not have a helmet kink.”

“I thought I would always have your honesty?” he teased, and watched her reaction closely. He had quickly realized the weakness she had exposed through her own attempt to probe at his, if this wasn’t part of her act; she was clearly more at risk of being disarmed by this sort of thing, and if he could destroy her concentration, he knew she would not be able to play mind tricks, and he’d therefore succeed in this training test. It almost felt like cheating.

“I- You do. Always.”

“You don’t desire me, then? You were very convincing.”

“Wha-- How can I desire someone who’s a walking metal death trap? You’re - I mean, your aura is pleasant, and I like your mannerisms, but… Just, no. Absolutely not.”

He took a step forward, and she didn’t budge. She folded her arms over her chest and glowered at the space above his head, the blush on her cheeks slowly beginning to creep down her pretty neck.

“--What are you doing.”

“Getting a closer look.”

“A-at what?” she stammered, breaking her stance to eye him warily.

“You.”

“--Right, next lesson. Go… Go back to your start position.”

“Are you going to convince me to?” he asked, now within arm’s reach of her.

“I- that’s-- Not the objective here.”

“Sarah.”

“Yes?”

“You’ve lost focus,” he announced softly. He did not reach for her, and did not invade her personal space further, but he knew she was aware of the fact that she’d allowed him to draw close enough to do so.

“I-- I. You’re right. I have. This was a bad idea, I’m sorry. I’ll just - I just need to sit,” she said, a pained expression on her face as she brushed past him, walking towards the other end of the ship.

All at once he bolted after her, and barely caught her before she would have grabbed the lump of rock sitting innocently on its perch. She laughed as he hauled her back from it, setting her hands on his wrists, entirely at ease. Her laugh was a bubbly, joyous sound that was pleasant on the ears.

“Awwww I was  _ so _ close! You did good. Twice, even. That’s a  _ great _ improvement. I think we can cross this one off the list. Though… You did  _ almost _ let me have it,” she said, craning her head back to smile up at him with mirth dancing in her eyes.

He abruptly let her go and stepped back, inclining his head to accept her praise, afraid to speak. Her smile did odd things to him, illusion or not.

“How much of that was an act?” he prodded. She did a fast double-take at him, cheeks still red.

“Everything I do is acting.”

“Even outside of this?”

She was silent for too long, and he wondered if this particular training session was going to have lasting consequences for the both of them. He genuinely could not tell where her thoughts were.

“...In a sense. It’s what I’m used to doing, I… Anyways, back to the start position. Good job. Next time, don’t let me get so close to it.”

“You don’t need to act around me.”

“I know. Except right now, because this is training. Ready?”

“I never stopped being ready.”

Sarah’s eyes darkened in a strange way, before she glanced away as if she couldn’t meet his gaze again.

All at once, he was reminded of the demanding heat he’d felt before, a heat that was still present. And distracting. And growing stronger.

_ ‘Ready, indeed.’ _

He stood rigidly, unwilling to let his discomfiture show as he waited for her to make the next move.

~*~

This was dangerous.

Sarah had known it would be, but she’d also known it was a necessary risk. The task he’d asked of her wasn’t one that would be comfortable for either of them at times; she had to prepare him to defend against someone who might be able to prod and clutch at his weaknesses, and to do that, she first had to make sure he knew what they were for himself. A large part of her was terrified that this training alone, should an intrusion reveal the memories of it, might equip their enemy with sensitive information. It was a calculated risk, and she had to have faith in the strength and conviction of her own ability to protect herself and her companions if they had a chance at surviving.

It didn’t make it any easier for her to play the seductress, though, even as she tried to immerse herself in the self-illusion that this was just an acting exercise. Just another round of rehearsal at the small town theatre, practicing for the upcoming show. She’d enjoyed such things when she was younger, had earned much of her coin for travel by participating in entertainments and enjoying the opportunity to express her creative side.

And to learn the survival skills she’d known at the time she would need as someone with secrets to hide and as a woman traveling alone.

His aura had shifted, as had his stance, and she wondered if she was coming to recognize his unique body language from time spent with the stoic warrior, or if this better grasp of understanding was a result of the intrusive nature of what this training demanded.

The most basic needs were the easiest to read. Hunger, fatigue, strong and uncomplicated emotions such as anger, love, or joy - and desire. It was the latter that she stoked now, finding the thread and sending casual suggestions his way to wrap around him like an invisible cloak, searching for entry points as she struggled to gather her own thoughts.

No, this wasn’t an easy thing to do at all.

But he didn’t need to know that.

With a wave of her hand, she returned her glamour, a strong suggestion to the viewer that insisted she was more than what she appeared. Sarah wondered what it was he saw - She could not see the illusion herself, only feel the radiating pulse of the energy she commanded and the subtle shift of his focus that told her it was working. Perhaps she was taller, more full chested, or had a more beautiful face. She might have a different skin tone or be a different weight. She could be a different species entirely, though she had to think he wasn’t  _ that _ kinky. Still, people could be surprising.

Simple, broadly set illusions were the safest for her to use, because they let the viewer fill in the details and supply their own interests. Folks enjoyed seeing what they wanted to, and she had the ability to present that to them. All she had to do was plant the suggestion that what they were looking at was something they liked to see, and their minds would do the rest.

It was also the extent of her ability with this particular sort of mind trick, fooling the eyes, though she couldn’t help but have the sense she could do something more complex if only she had someone to teach her how.

But that was a problem for another time.

She glanced up to check on the status of her sparring partner. He still stood rigidly, watching her, and that alone was a good sign; he was resisting, and still conscious and aware. The moment his attention slipped, her spell would draw him under.

It was time, she decided, to pull out the big guns.

Sarah walked over to the makeshift playpen and reached down to collect the child, and took especial care to do so in a way that emphasized feminine grace. A dainty side-ways seat and a toss of her choppy hair over the opposite shoulder to expose the side of her neck and draw the eyes up her exposed form.

“What are you doing with the kid?” he asked, a new tension in his voice.

Sarah sent a reassuring smile his way as she settled Greenie in her lap.

“This is what you like to see, isn’t it? A happy family,” she explained, fluttering her lashes for good measure as she deliberately turned her attention halfway towards her ward. The child sat in her lap and burbled happily, running his hands over the green fabric of her sleeves. She fancied that he liked the color on her.

Something had changed in the room’s mood, and she flicked her gaze up to watch her quarry. Din’s posture had shifted, and there was a new intensity to his bearing that almost had her do a double-take, the hair on her arms and neck standing up on end under the heat of his regard.

In saying the first thing to come to mind, she realized she’d accidentally hit upon a secret weak spot. She shouldn’t have been so surprised, she mused a moment later, as he was after all a man who had upended his entire life for the sake of one wayward child and took the bond of family ties  _ very _ seriously where the Mandalorians were concerned.

That she was now an honorary part of that family made her leverage in this challenge almost unfair.

“Come and join us,” she invited, and beckoned with a hand while she patted the spot next to her. She laced her words with power, drawing on the Force to send the subtle suggestion to his mind that told him  _ ‘Yes, this is what you want. Peace. Belonging. A happy family that you are part of. Join your clanmates.’ _

He moved as if struggling against his own actions, a jerky step and an awkward shift of his shoulders, and Sarah quickly pounced on the opening his indecision afforded her.

“Bring me the crystal.” It was a more direct approach than she normally employed, and she wanted to see if he was in fragile enough of a position to fall prey to the basic command. His helmet turned, looking down at the other end of the ship. “The child likes to play with it,” she added with a smile, running her hand gently over Greenie’s head and feeling a flutter in her heart at the happy sound the babe gurgled out. He was watching the both of them with obvious interest, now, the scraggly plush toy he’d been holding forgotten on her lap.

“He does,” the Mandalorian agreed, still frozen in place. He wavered as if being physically pulled in opposite directions.

_ ‘And you like to fulfill his wants, what few of them you can afford to indulge.’ _

She managed to keep herself from sighing in disappointment as the warrior turned and walked down the length of the ship with a sure, hasty stride, and picked the stone up.

When he returned, she held her hand out for it, and was pleasantly surprised when instead he reached over and scooped little Greenie up off her lap.

“Last I checked, you’re the only one here who’s not allowed to touch it. The kid can, though,” he announced as he shifted the child to be nestled comfortably in the crook of an arm, and handed him the purple crystal.

Sarah felt her cheeks heat as she followed his words with a very suggestive thought, and saw the effect it had on him when he failed to block it, distracted as he was with the child under his care.

She wasn’t sure she liked knowing just how badly the man  _ would _ like to be touched. It was a very human need, and a very understandable one, but that didn’t make the intimate knowing any less personal to be aware of.

She approved of his next choice; he sat down beside her, close enough that their shoulders brushed. He was moving with the river she had pushed him into, while maintaining his restraint and self control.

This sort of contact was the least of his hidden desires, and she tried not to get all warm and fuzzy inside over it. She’d always been a very tactile person, holding hands and giving piggyback rides and sitting with childhood friends at slumber parties in a tangled heap of pillows and snacks and limbs.

But  _ her _ weaknesses weren’t the ones she was trying to exploit, here.

She reached over to play with Greenie’s ear, and was stopped by a gloved hand gently clamping around her wrist. He carefully moved her arm aside, and the helmet turned to look at her. His grip was pleasantly warm against her skin, and she felt a zip of electricity run down her spine.

“Not while the kid has the stone.”

Sarah abruptly decided that it was time to end this training session. She pulled her hand free and settled them in her lap, then let the glamour drop. She could not wait to get out of the dress and back into her baggy clothes.

“This training session is officially over. You did very well; I’m gonna say you passed with flying colors, even. Now, tell me what you observed.”

Radio silence.

She lifted her gaze from the child to look at him, brows furrowing.

“Mando…? Din?” she corrected.

“...I’d rather not talk about it in front of the kid,” he admitted, and Sarah’s cheeks burned. If she hadn’t promised not to play tricks outside of training, she would seriously consider a glamor to suggest that she definitely was  _ not _ blushing like a schoolgirl. “I don’t know how much he understands of what gets said around him, but he seems to catch the gist of things. I’d rather err on the side of caution.”

“Ah. Uh. Right. Good plan. I’m going to go get changed. I’ll be right back.”

“Wait.”

She had already stood, so paused to look down at him. He was looking at her, the shiny helmet inscrutable as ever, and the most she could tell of his mood without actively prying deeper was that it was reserved, guarded. No hints for her at his thoughts.

“...Yes?” she finally prompted, and wondered if he was struggling to find words. She had no other explanation for his extended silence.

The helmet dipped, and she got the distinct impression he was using the child as a convenient excuse for distraction.

“It’s nothing. I’m gonna offer him some food.”

Bewildered, Sarah watched him rise and go to fetch it. Belatedly, she made for the other end of the ship to get changed.

When she emerged, Din Djarin was again seated on the crate, the child next to him. Greenie was sitting, his little back leaned trustingly against the Mandalorian’s thigh as he stuffed chunks of meat in his mouth.

“You two are ridiculously cute together,” Sarah announced, sitting down a comfortable distance away. The helmet turned towards her and she smiled.

“I’m pretty sure that’s more the kid. Armor isn’t cute.”

“I think nexu and deadly spaceships are adorable. I’m pretty sure it’s a female thing, don’t worry.”

He shifted on the seat, and Sarah frowned. She had a guess at what was wrong.

“...Sorry. That was a pretty intense test. Need some space?” she offered.

“No, that’s not it. You’re fine.”

“Can I ask what it is, then?” She asked it tentatively, unsure just how much it was appropriate to prod after she’d spent the last few hours doing so for entirely different motives. Right now, she was only curious about and concerned for her new friend.

He was silent for long enough she thought he might not answer, and it left her feeling out of sorts and very awkward. She hoped she hadn't ruined things between them. The glamour should have made her look different enough that she’d been counting on him being able to completely separate the her from the test, and the her outside of it, but maybe that wasn’t enough.

Just as she turned to go, he spoke.

“Are you acting, right now?” he asked quietly. Sarah froze in place, and frowned.

“No. Sort of? But not in the way you might think.” She took a seat apart from the two, crossed her legs, and leaned on her knees with her elbows. “That test wasn’t easy for me, so I’m trying to move past it.” She looked down and sighed, and rubbed the back of her head. “I probably shouldn’t have said what I did. When you first asked,” she clarified. “Everyone acts. People smile to be polite even when inside they’re feeling miserable or crabby about something entirely unrelated. That’s technically acting, and I get caught up on the technicalities of things. That’s why I said what I did.”

“That makes more sense. But there’s more to it than that. Why say you’ll be honest in a trial meant to deceive? I doubt the enemy will refrain from lies.”

“Because I made an oath to you that I’d be honest. And because I detest lying. Not that half-truths are morally better, but I’m used to subverting someone’s focus to other things by only telling them parts, or letting them assume something unrelated is relevant. If you never want to be caught in a lie and face those consequences, the best thing to do is never lie.” She grimaced, for she'd learned that the hard way.

“You make it sound complicated.”

“I  _ am _ complicated,” she said, a corner of her mouth twitching up in a half-smile. “So are you. Besides; outright lies are far easier to tell apart from something that is embedded in truth. I’d rather you be able to face the hardest challenges first.”

“You’re very confident of your own cleverness.”

“I am. For good reason, and also because I have to be. If I doubt myself, then I’ve already lost. The key is to nurture a truthful self awareness without hinging everything on confidence alone. I can make mistakes; I trust myself to learn from them and grow stronger because of it. Confidence does not have to mean I think myself infallible.”

“You’re a very wise woman, Sarah.”

She turned away when she felt her cheeks heat, and shrugged.

“Thank you. I’ve learned a lot from my elders and experiences.” She looked back when Greenie made a squealing burble sound, and laughed softly at the image of the hardened warrior carefully scooping up the little tyke to set him back down in his playpen. He waddled over to his pile of toys, and picked up a rock and an empty can to clink together, listening to the sound they made with twitching ears.

Din looked over to the ladderway, and Sarah stood, nodding.

“We’ll be back in a bit little guy, you have fun playing,” she soothed, smiling as the child turned to watch the Mandalorian leave, toys momentarily forgotten. His wide-eyed gaze slowly turned towards her, and Sarah had the sudden and distinct impression that he knew something she didn’t.

More unnerved than she cared to admit, she waved and left him to play with his toys. She paused on the ladder to peek and make sure he was staying put. He had sat himself down to stack up his blocks. Content with that, Sarah climbed up into the cockpit.

Din was standing, and somehow that made her feel nervous even though there was absolutely nothing at all wrong with that alone. Maybe it was that she was just so used to seeing him seated in the pilot’s seat. Or maybe it was because the room suddenly felt too small for the both of them. When he heard her sit down, he turned and followed suit. That made it a little better.

“I felt… Things. Sensations I normally don’t. Was that because you planted them?”

Sarah wasn’t surprised he jumped right into discussion without any preamble, and it was something she was quickly coming to like about him.

“Some of them may have been; others were your own reaction, but may have been exaggerated. I drew notice to what you were content to ignore.”

“What would have happened if I failed to resist it?” There was a roughness to his voice she pretended to ignore, cheeks flaming. It wasn’t a question she’d been expecting, and Sarah took a moment to consider carefully before she answered.

“I would have called a halt before things got out of hand. Dropping the glamour would have been the dramatic step one. I’m curious, what did you see?” He was silent for several moments before he answered, and Sarah waited patiently.

“...You don’t know?”

“No. I cannot see my own illusion; I only gave you the suggestion that you were looking at what you wanted to see. I kinda wondered if you’d see someone in a pretty helmet,” she teased, smiling.

Her smile slipped at his lack of response, and she shifted uneasily in her chair. Time to move on.

“Tell me what else you observed. You blocked some of my suggestions, though not all of them. Did you recognize you were doing it?”

“No. Maybe? I’m not sure.”

She gestured for him to keep going, and the Mandalorian sighed.

“I heard… Words, sometimes. Thoughts that weren’t my own. Some were easy to ignore. Others weren’t. Pictures,” he added after a moment, as if reluctant to admit it.

“That’s a good thing, I think. What about sensations?”

This time, his sigh was sharp and easily audible, and might have made her laugh if this wasn’t such a serious discussion.

“I’m not sure.”

“I know you can do better than that. I saw you resisting.”

“That was your doing, then.” He sounded relieved, and that put up an alarm bell in Sarah’s mind. She couldn’t let him brush something off with the excuse it was out of his control, because it wasn’t. At least, she  _ hoped _ it wasn’t.

“Which part?”

“You know what part.”

“I do. What I want to make sure of is that  _ you _ do. Do not grant me a measure of control over you by allowing yourself to believe that something you felt was wholly out of your control or irrelevant to your being; this is where truth is more dangerous than a lie. A lie, you can more easily tell apart and deflect because it is not yours, even if your  _ response _ to it is genuine. When a suggestion plays upon a truth, you need to be able to discern the fact it is an exaggeration of what is already yours. The  _ exaggeration  _ is the deception.”

“Are you saying I’m in love with you?” he asked, incredulous. Sarah couldn’t help but laugh this time, imagining a scandalized expression behind that inscrutable helm.

“Of course not. But the image I presented to you was meant to play upon your own base desires; even if those desires are not something you would choose to pursue, they are still yours. You have fierce willpower. You would not knowingly choose to do something that is not of your nature, which is a good thing. Desire is a powerful force. It guides our wants, and challenges our restraint. It can conflict with our needs. What we choose to do in response to that is what makes us who we are.”

He waved a hand as if to brush aside her lecture and sat forward. She wondered if he was glowering at her, or perhaps he was just wary, or simply deep in thought. His shoulders were tense yet his posture was otherwise loose and open, and she took that as a measure of the building trust between them holding true. This was difficult, but he wasn’t backing down from the challenge.

“I wanted you.” The admission was flat and short, like he had to force it out.

“You wanted the beautiful illusion you saw,” she corrected, calm in the wake of his displeasure. This and that were entirely different things. “Combined with a very human need my suggestions drew attention to.”

“You’re contradicting yourself. You say that what I felt was an exaggeration of my own desires, but that I didn’t truly desire you. Which is it?”

Her brows furrowed, and she wondered if she was missing something crucial here.

“I’m saying that everyone has lust and an enjoyment of pleasure somewhere in their psyche; that’s human nature. It’s normal. But just because we have those things, it doesn’t mean they are correct. You do not actually desire  _ me; _ you simply desire. Does that make more sense?”

“...No.”

“You’re not in love with me, and you’re not desiring me,” Sarah warily explained. She had begun to feel like she was grasping at straws. “Your first and far more complicated desire is to honor your Oath, which means that you do not actually want to pursue any sort of romance with someone, right? You said I’m not the first person to try and charm you.”

“Your the first person who succeeded.”

She wasn’t sure she’d heard him right at first, but when the realization set in Sarah was dimly aware she had a shell-shocked expression on her face.

“I--”

“Your illusion didn’t change much. It was still you.”

_ “What?” _

“You changed your hair,” he added stiffly, and Sarah blinked slowly.

“Just… the hair?” she repeated, bewildered.

“Maybe the dress a bit. Cleaned your face up. You were beautiful,” he answered quietly, leaning back in his seat. Sarah blinked again, and felt butterflies in her stomach. She crossed a leg and started swiveling her chair back and forth, unable to keep still.

“I think I made a miscalculation,” she said, voice an octave higher in pitch. “I’m sorry. I didn’t - I thought it would make things more drastically different.”

“You didn’t know what I would see.”

“I didn’t,” she confirmed, not sure what to do with this information. Nothing, she quickly decided. What had happened during their mental spar would stay there.

She heard him start to speak when he cut himself off at the sound of some alarm that beeped at him from the control panel. Without a word the Mandalorian swiveled in his chair to look at the monitors.

She waited impatiently as he tapped buttons, then the helm turned her way.

“Stay inside the ship; watch the kid. We’ve got lifeforms moving around outside, I’m going to go see what’s there.”

“Be safe about it.”

“I will.”

She dropped down the hatch and jogged over to Greenie, scooped the child up, and collected her gun harness from the box that had been emptied for her to store her belongings in. She set him down in the sleeping chamber as their protector exited the ship with his jetpack on and blaster drawn, and she focused on strapping herself up. Idly, she realized she was going to have to get used to wearing this more often than not. She’d already made note of the fact Din Djarin was never without his weapons close at hand, even in the relative safety of the ship.

Thoughts for another time, she decided, and shoved her new pistol into a boot and drew the other one from its holster. She sat down in front of Greenie with the gun on her lap, then waited in tense silence.

Minutes passed, and all she heard was the idle sounds of the ship and Greenie’s quiet noises. He waddled up to sit next to her, and she reached over to wrap a protective arm around him, tucking the child against her side. In short order the kid was asleep.

Enough time passed that she had begun to feel nervous, and wondered just how long he would be gone. She did not hear any commotion outside, and she decided to take that as a good sign.

Just when she was at the extent of her patience and the minutes had since dragged on into well over an hour, the door of the ship hissed and popped open, extending its ramp. She stood and aimed her gun, tilting her body to protect the child she held securely in her other arm.

She lowered it immediately when her helmeted friend entered, a large package under his arm.

“What’s that?” she asked, holstering her gun.

“Meat. The sand people recognized my ship. I helped them out a while back.”

“Sand people?” she questioned.

“Tusken raiders. They’re the natives on this planet. This is a gift to welcome us, they’ve been informed we’ll be doing target practice outside. We’re allowed to hunt here provided we share the carcasses with them. We get the meat, they keep the bones and organs.”

“That’s a generous exchange,” she observed.

“Be careful. They might be allies, but their culture is brutal, especially towards outsiders. Don’t go out alone.”

“I wasn’t planning to, but I’ll take the warning to heart. Will I get to meet them?”

“Probably. There’s not much I can do to avoid that. They come and go as they wish, and I think they wish to meet you and the kid.”

He didn’t sound overly charmed by the idea, but she also recognized he didn’t seem alarmed, either.

“Any advice?”

“If they offer you something, accept it. If you can gift something in return, you’ll earn their regard.”

“I’ll keep some items on me for trade, then.” She had the perfect idea of what to bring.

“That’s a good plan.”

“When do we start target practice?” Sarah asked, eager to avoid returning to the discussion they had left behind.

“Whenever you’re ready to.”

“I’ll get the carrier out,” she announced, and brought Greenie over to settle him into his cozy pack. “Is the heat going to hurt him?”

“It shouldn’t. He doesn’t seem bothered by the cold or heat any more than we do. Maybe better.”

“Alright, little guy. Ready to go on an adventure?” she asked, and leaned forward to boop her nose against his. She smiled widely at the laughing squeal he gave in reply. His head turned this way and that as if he were excited, and Sarah carefully slipped the straps of his carrier over her shoulders, then pulled the buckles snug. He was a warm weight against her back.

“All good?” she asked, craning her neck back. She was surprised but not displeased when Din stepped up to make adjustments, fussing over the child’s robe to more securely tuck his head in.

“All good.”

“I’ve never been on Tatooine before,” Sarah mused, and followed him outside and down the ramp. Her steps faltered when she spotted a large furry beast in the near distance, a slim figure walking beside it.

“What is that?” she asked, coming to stand beside him. He had stopped to watch; the figure was walking towards them.

“Bantha and its rider. Looks like we’ll have our first guest.”

“Do they speak Basic?”

“No, though some of them might understand more than they let on. They will recognize the tone of your voice. Stay calm and talk quietly.”

“Noted.”

He led her forward, clearly intent on meeting the Tusken halfway. A tap of a button on his armguard made the ship’s ramp retract and close, and Sarah glanced behind to watch it shrink into the distance.

The sand was strange beneath her boots, shifting and sliding and making her footing feel unsteady. She had played on sandy beaches before, but most of the waterways she’d been used to had been muddy-banked rivers and lakes.

The intense heat had felt pleasant at first, cold as she was on the ship, but it wore off fast. The dry air made her nose itch and her throat stick when she swallowed, and she quickly decided that she was not a major fan of the desert. Endless sands stretched out around them, and she was relieved when they left the open space they had landed on and stepped onto solid stone.

She did a double take at the loud gurgling noise Din Djarin made that she quickly recognized as a form of language, his hands lifting to gesture and move in a deliberate pattern. Fascinated by her companion’s newly revealed talent, she watched the interaction with open curiosity as the stranger drew near. He - she? Them? There was no way to tell - returned the greeting and barked out a series of warbles and gruff, huffing noises she wasn’t sure she’d be able to replicate.

They were close enough now that the Tusken drew to a halt. His Bantha made a deep rumbling noise as it obediently stopped walking, then turned its massive head to look around.

Sarah glanced away from it when hands began gesturing at her, and burned with curiosity to know what was being said.

Din’s helmet turned towards her sharply, then he looked back and made a quick gesture, shaking his head.

The Tusken shrugged and jerked his head in an awkward bob, gesturing with his hands in sharp, well-practiced movements. Sarah could make no sense of what they were conversing about, nor what kind of mood the foreign language might suggest.

Din turned to look back at her.

“He wants to know if you would like a covering against the heat for you and the child. He says your fair skin will burn in the hot sun.”

She was surprised he didn’t tell her how to answer, and the freedom of choice buoyed her already substantial respect for him.

“I would be grateful to accept. May I offer him a gift in return?” she asked.

He nodded and turned to translate for her, and Sarah shoved a hand in her pocket to withdraw a small, smooth stone in the vague shape of an arrow. It was a blue so dark it was almost black, polished to a dull shine and carved with a series of glyphs that glittered faintly in the sun. It pulsed softly with a deeply entrenched power, cool even in the desert heat.

“What is that?” he asked, tilting his head to observe the Tusken’s reaction. He was watching her, likely staring at the object she held.

“It’s a dowsing stone I made. It was soaked in the moonlit waters of a still lake in a sacred place. My friend Afori taught me the ceremony,” she explained somewhat hesitantly, and paused to let Din translate as he turned to likely tell the Tusken of the gift she offered. “It carries the blessing of water. At night, it’s runes will glow when a water source is near. It will not work in the daytime.”

After Din finished translating, the Tusken made a series of sounds that Sarah wasn’t sure were excited or skeptical. Possibly both.

“Did I choose wrong?” she whispered, anxious.

“No, but you may have chosen too well. Water is a precious resource in the desert.”

“That’s why I chose it,” she mumbled. “Please let him know this is a gift I give freely; they have greater need of it than I do.”

A short exchange, and Din placed a hand on the small of her back to guide her forward. With both hands she extended the stone to offer it to the stranger, and smiled as the being carefully scooped up the little rock. He turned it this way and that, making a series of clicking noises before he then stuffed it away into a pocket.

He barked a series of warbles and gestured to her, and Sarah looked to Din for translation.

“He wants to know if you can make more of them; they would be a great asset to the tribe.”

“I’m afraid not. The ritual took three seasons to prepare, and I had help making it. Should I ever come by the chance to make another, I will keep their need in mind.”

After Din spoke for her, the Tusken abruptly turned and began rummaging in the sacks the Bantha held. He withdrew a long swath of beige cloth the same shade as his robes, a strand of bone beads, and a small sea-urchin looking thing Sarah wasn’t sure was a rock, dead coral, or some kind of plant.

The stranger made a great deal of presenting the items to her, thrusting the fabric into her arms and dramatically laying the primitive necklace over her head, and she felt flustered by the attention.

When he pressed his thumbs into the green bubbly thing and it cracked with a hiss of dust like a dried puffball mushroom, Sarah darted a glance to Din as it was offered to her.

“You drink it, he is offering you a gift of water.”

“I’m honored,” she breathed, accepting it. She hesitated as she brought it up to her lips, and fought not to wrinkle her nose against the acrid, sulfur scent. Steeling herself, she took a deep gulp that nearly made her gag, then offered the rest back to the Tusken. He waved it off then gestured at her eagerly, and Sarah dutifully drained the rest while she struggled to keep a straight face. It tasted as bad as it smelled.

Seeming pleased, the stranger warbled and barked something, and Din nodded. After another line of the strange language, she felt her companion stiffen beside her.

He gestured sharply and shook his head in an exaggerated fashion, and Sarah wondered what had been said.

The Tusken made a noise that sounded like laughter before it turned into speech, and he gestured to Sarah up and down. Din shook his head again as he gestured quickly.

“What’s he saying?”

Din looked at her, his hands stilled in the air mid-motion, and the Tusken laughed again. Sarah felt her ears turn red. The Mandalorian didn’t answer her, just turned back and finished whatever it was he was saying.

The Tusken shook his head and warbled, then turned and scrambled up the side of his Bantha. He lifted his staff and shook it in the air, barked out a loud howling noise, and then slowly the pair turned to amble off.

“What did he say?” Sarah demanded as they watched him depart.

“He offered to make you a wife in the tribe, among other things.”

“Uh.” She wasn’t sure she wanted to know  _ what _ other things.

“You  _ do _ draw too much attention.” The helmet turned to look at her accusingly. At least, she thought it was accusing. Maybe she could draw some facial expressions on his helmet with a marker.

“All I did was give him a rock!”

“A rock you claim can lead them to a source of water.” There was a warning edge to his tone that made her bristle.

“I didn’t lie,” she snapped, cheeks burning. “It will serve its purpose.”

“That is not _just_ a rock,” Din drawled. “You’ve given them a great gift. I would not be surprised to hear your name sung in their songs in the seasons to come.”

“Uh…”

“Come on.” He put a hand to her back and turned her away, then directed her towards the rocky crags. “Target practice time.”

“How’s Greenie doing?” she asked, craning her head back. A happy burble answered her.

“The kid’s fine. Watch your step.”

“I’m fine,” she quipped, stepping out from the hand still pressed warm at her back. She carefully picked her way down the rocks, mindful of her precious cargo, until they had descended between two tall outcroppings and found themselves in a deeper bowl of rock surrounded on all sides by jutting stone and winding paths. Small lizards darted here and there all over the place, swarming to peer curiously at them.

“I don’t have to shoot them, do I?” she asked warily. She wrapped the swath of cloth she’d been given around her shoulders as a loose scarf to free her hands.

“No, not unless you plan on eating them.”

Relieved, she only nodded, then waited for instruction.

“Draw your gun.”

She did so, and did a double-take as he shook his head.

“Too slow. Do it again.”

She shoved it into the holster under her left arm, then made to pull it out - only to be stopped by his hand over hers as he shoved it back into place, secured the strap’s clip, and deliberately pushed her arm back down to her side.

“Again.”

Sarah complied, moving as quick as she could to unsnap and draw the blaster.

“Better. Stay put.”

He walked away and she watched as he set down a series of rocks on a large, oblong boulder.

When he returned, she looked at him.

“Shoot the rocks.”

Impatient with the basics yet unwilling to be a bad student, Sarah complied, shooting each one off in quick succession without a wasted shot.

“I know how to aim,” she stated simply.

“Give me the kid.”

“Alright.” She loosened the straps and passed Greenie over, then watched as he carefully secured the child on his back. He walked downrange and set up another set of rocks, then returned.

“Shoot the rocks.”

She shot him a look with furrowed brows and thin lips, but raised her gun to comply. At her first shot she was suddenly staring up at the sky, her feet swept out from under her. Alarmed, she sat up and looked around for any sign of a threat, wondering if he’d knocked her over for some purpose.

“You missed.”

She understood the purpose then, and closed her gaping mouth. Cheeks heating, Sarah rolled away from him and jumped back to her feet to fire again. She startled badly at the sound of a blaster’s discharge going off  _ directly _ behind her head, and whirled around to see Din Djarin holding his gun up, smoke drifting from the barrel.

“Shoot the rocks,” he ordered, and fired again. She flinched at the noise, then turned and put it out of her mind.

Two of her shots missed, but she’d shot each stone off its perch. She hissed a curse and lowered her blaster, then turned to glower at him. She wanted to say  _ something, _ but nothing good came to mind and she didn’t dare complain to him after he had borne her own lessons without whining about it.

Things progressed from there. He provided her with increasingly difficult distractions - shooting the ground next to her feet or firing his gun directly behind her head when she least expected the noise. He swept out her feet and demanded she maintain her aim even as she fell and rolled with the motion. He ordered her to jog in circles and fire at the same time while moving. He had her shoot from a sitting position, from flat on her belly, and laying at an awkward angle on her back and each side.

She liked it least when he threw sand over her head that cascaded down in front of her eyes, making her sputter.

The hardest challenge was when he ordered her to outshoot  _ him. _ He alternated between letting each of them call the target, and each time she had to holster her gun and wait for his mark. As soon as he gave it, she had to draw her gun and shoot, with the intent to hit the mark before he did.

He was  _ fast, _ and a deadly good shot, and somewhere along the line Sarah stopped hating the exercises and her repeated failures and began being impressed by his prowess instead. A prowess he was willing to teach her. It became something of a competition then, and they kept at it until Tatooine's twin suns had risen to their highest zenith. The heat was unbearable, and she drew up the thin fabric she had been provided by the Tusken with a new appreciation for the gift. She felt passionately certain it’d been a fair trade.

Greenie was still awake and happy, and occasionally gurgled at them or laughed when Sarah did something particularly clumsy.

“That’s enough for today. Let’s head back for food and water.”

“Roger that,” Sarah rasped, gratefully holstering her gun. She had a stitch in her side and her throat was painfully parched, but she wasn’t willing to admit her discomfort.

By the time they’d made it back to the ship, she was thoroughly exhausted. She still accepted Greenie from Din after he had loosened the carrier straps, and she settled the child down on her bed then turned to help dish up.

“Rest. I’ll take care of this.” He waved her away, and Sarah pursed her lips, then turned to find the water cup instead.

She found it a few moments later when her armored friend held the filled cup out to her, and she immediately took it over to Greenie to offer him a drink. The kid drained half the cup then tried dunking his hands in it, so she drew it back and gave him an affectionate pat on the head.

“Not with the water we consume, Greenie. He likes playing with water,” she added, amused.

“Here. I’ll make sure he eats.”

“What about you?” Sarah asked and eyed him sharply as she accepted the boxy tray of food. There were suspicious looking vegetable chunks and several thin slices of meat she suspected came from the Tusken’s gift. “You haven’t eaten all day, unless you were stuffing snacks under your helmet when my back was turned.”

“I’ll eat after.”

“How about I go up and chow down in the cockpit, while you get some grub. Oh. Wait. Kid can’t see your face either, right?” she questioned and frowned as she looked down at the tray of food.

“No. It’s alright; I’ll eat later.”

“I think it just weirds me out not to see you’re being taken care of. You  _ do _ actually eat, right?”

He made a funny gesture with his shoulders and head she wasn’t sure how to interpret, because it was an entirely new expression to her.

“Yes, I do actually eat,” he assured, looking right at her. “You don’t need to worry about me. The kid’s your ward, fuss over  _ him.” _

“You’re technically  _ both _ my ward, since you’re also under them,” she added, enjoying the play on words.

“I adopted you into  _ my _ clan. You fall under my care.”

Sarah raised both eyebrows, but waited to reply until she was done scarfing down her meal. She watched as he fed strips of meat to little Greenie, who accepted them with enthusiasm before they were stuffed into his mouth.

“I’m pretty sure that means we take care of eachother. Though… I’ve been meaning to ask. What exactly does that mean?”

“What does what mean?” She figured he wasn’t playing dumb and simply wanted further elaboration, so she granted it without hesitation as she walked away to wash and pack away her dish.

“To be part of your clan. I’m wondering what kind of responsibilities it entails.”

“For you, nothing you aren’t already doing, unless you choose to swear into the Mandalorian Creed.” Sarah was a little startled to learn that was even an option.

“I would literally go insane if I had a bucket on my head twenty-four-seven, so hard pass.” She picked up the emptied cup and refilled it with clean, glorious water.

“It’s not so bad. I never have to worry about sunburn. And you get to make faces at people without them knowing. Sounds like your sort of thing.”

Greenie made a giggling noise, and she wondered if he understood the joke or if he only laughed along with her own amused chuckle. She thought maybe the kid did, and watched as he was handed another strip of meat while she refilled their only drinking cup.

“Do you do that? Make faces at people? Because you’re right, I definitely would. All the time. Constantly.” She stopped next to him.

“Now and then.” There was humor in his voice, something she wasn’t used to hearing and decided she would like to see more of.

“Will you at least go drink some water?” she asked as she pushed the cup at him.

He turned to look at her, and after a moment accepted the cup. Instead of walking away to take it though, he startled her by lifting it up to the bottom of his helmet as he began to lift it up and tip it.

Sarah whirled around before she could see even a peep of skin around the hand that probably covered what little of his chin was exposed, her back to him, and heard him sputter water with a short, sharp laugh at her expense. His voice sounded just a little clearer to her ears, and it was an absurdly intimate difference for such a small detail.

“Relax. I’m well practiced at this; I do it around the kid all the time. You can’t see anything.”

She turned around with bright cheeks, embarrassed at her overreaction and maybe a bit disgruntled he’d managed to so thoroughly catch her off guard. He wiped water off his chin from under the helmet then pulled the whole thing down snug, and she scoffed lightly. Greenie was watching them both with a curious expression, still gnawing on his lunch.

“Well. Anyways - so what’s it mean to you that I’m in your clan? Does it have a name?” She smoothed her shirt as she sat back down, and accepted the empty cup from him.

“It means you’re family; I’m responsible for looking out for you, and ensuring your protection. There’s not really a precedent. Our situation is… Unique.” The helmet tilted to nod at their small and happy companion. “For him, I need to return him to his own kind.”

Sarah was quiet for a moment, then glanced at him.

“When we’ve brought him back to his home, are we splitting ways?”

“Not if you wish to stay.”

“I guess we’ll face that when we get there, then,” she said, smiling a bit. “I might.”

“I guess we will. You should start working with the kid soon, see if you can teach him anything. Find out what his abilities are.”

“Maybe the little guy will teach  _ me _ something,” she mused, smiling. The child looked up at her and made a soft beeping noise, and it made her smile widen.

Was it language, or was it just happy baby burbles? She wished she knew more about his species.

“Maybe. I guess I’ll make that the next task of the day, unless you have something else in mind.”

“No, that’s good.”

“So whatcha think Greenie, you up for some practice after lunch?”

Wide black eyes looked up at her, and she took the raised ears and happy noise as an affirmative.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Never underestimate children. They always know more than they let on, no matter what age they are, or what they choose to act on.
> 
> I'm real interested in exploring the "mind trick" aspect of Force use abilities, so there's going to be a LOT of that in this fic, and not just from Sarah. Because what's a character with a well honed skill set without someone to go up against?
> 
> Din's got epic walking death trap, Sarah has cleverness.
> 
> If it's not posted by the time you're reading this, the next chapter is currently under an editing pass. I've tweaked each chapter with a read-through before i post, so they're technically getting 2-3 edit passes each.


	4. Mind Stuff

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Plot really starts to get rolling, and hello at the first serious glimpse into the Tusken Raiders of this story.

Sarah had to admit; she had absolutely no idea how to go about this. Teaching Din Djarin had proven easier than she’d been expecting it to, largely because he was an adult who could have a conversation about the finer details. Some thirty years of experience and drawing from the lessons of others had fueled her knowledge, and it was rather exciting to find a way to convert it into a shareable dialogue with someone. In a way, talking about what she did was helping her to better understand her own abilities.

Grogu, however, couldn’t hold a conversation with her.

Feeling very much out of her league, she decided to start with the basics and figure out if the child was willing to replicate things she’d been told he was capable of, and just how much he understood of what was asked of him.

“Alright, bud. Din says you get real tired after you’ve done your miracles, so I figured we’d start with something small. Can you lift this up?” She offered him the small purple crystal on her palm, about a foot out of the child’s reach. He looked at the stone in her hand, then up at her, then his ears dropped and lowered.

“I don’t think he understands you.”

“I think he understands more than I’d maybe like. Notice how he’s always paying attention? This looks more like reluctance.” She thought back to that moment when his dark, unreadable stare had so unnerved her with the sense of  _ knowing. _ He might be a child, but she wasn’t convinced he was a clueless one.

“Will you please try for me, Greenie?” she asked, smiling at him encouragingly. “Just focus on the stone and lift it up. Just a little, so you don’t tire yourself out.”

He  _ rasberried _ at her. Sarah sat back on her heels, and huffed in amusement.

“Hang on, I’ve got an idea.” Din Djarin vanished from the room, and returned shortly after with something in his hand. He walked over and held it out to her. Resting in his palm was a vaguely familiar, small silver sphere, with a screw-hole where it obviously connected to something else. “Try with this. Kid likes to play with it.”

“Alright. How about this, Greenie? Can you lift this up in the air? I’ll let you play with it if you do.”

The child perked immediately, looking at the ball. He lifted his hands and made a grabbing motion for it, then looked to her expectantly.

“Nope. You need to get it yourself if you want it; do you?”

Greenie burbled and squealed, lifted his hands, then made a heart wrenchingly pathetic whimpering noise. She held firm in the face of the unfair levels of cuteness.

“No shortcuts, kid. You can do this,” Din encouraged as he sat down to watch.

The child sighed as if exasperated, like a very tiny and short-lived tantrum, and then he lifted his hands, large eyes squinted shut as he focused.

Sarah felt the hair on the back of her neck stand on end as she became immediately aware of a new sensation; it was a blooming warmth that resonated with her as it rolled around the room in thick, palpable waves. 

“Can you feel that?” she asked, awed, and glanced at her companion. The helmet turned towards her.

“Probably not. What do you feel?”

“I’m not sure, but it’s… Something - Oh!” the ball lifted off her palm, then darted through the air and popped neatly into the child’s hand. Sarah stared at him wide-eyed both in amazement and in delight. “Good job, kiddo! You did so well,” she reached over to brush her knuckle against his cheek, smiling as he burbled at her.

She was surprised when the tiny creature extended his free-hand towards her and turned his palm over. Unsure what it was he wanted but having a guess, she reached over to let him grasp her finger.

The warm sensation surrounded her again, and she let out a soft breath of wonderment. It was familiar, she realized; the same kind of energy but in a different weave, the same thing that flowed through her when she set wards or wove suggestions and illusions. It was the undeniable concentration of the Force.

The child’s eyes opened, and she met his gaze. The moment she did, it felt as though she was looking at a different being; there was a depth to his eyes that she’d not noticed before, and something seemed to have shifted in his demeanor, like the child had been only pretending.

Something brushed against her mind, and she gasped.

~*~

“What’s happening?” Din asked, looking back and forth between the two. He couldn’t sense or see what had changed, but the two of them were clearly doing  _ something. _ Sarah’s posture had gone stiff and her eyes were wide in shock or amazement, and there was an intensity to the child’s regard he’d seen only glimpses of before.

“I’m - I’m not sure. He’s trying to do something, I can… I can feel it,” she breathed. All at once the young woman jolted as if struck and Din jumped to his feet, unsure if he should intercede. Her jaw had dropped, but then she leaned forward as if fascinated, alarm forgotten. “I think… I think he’s trying to share thoughts,” she murmured.

“The kid can do the mind stuff?”

“It’s like something warm wrapping around my head. I have no idea what to do.”

“You think it’s safe to try letting him in? I don’t think the kid would harm you. He knows better,” he added, both because he believed that and as a firm warning - just in case - to the kid, who flicked an ear at him.

Sarah closed her eyes at the same time Grogu did, and Din worked his jaw in anticipation, standing rigidly. The seconds ticked by, and both of his wards remained locked in their silent trance. With nothing else to do, he began to pace. He kept his steps light so as not to disturb whatever it was the two of them were doing, frequently looking their way.

They hadn’t moved an inch. Sarah still crouched before him with one slender finger carefully clutched in the Foundling’s tiny hand.

He walked back over to them and slowly crouched down, and wondered what was happening.

Eventually he sat down on the floor, leaned back against the magnetically anchored crate as he watched them, one arm draped over a knee.

Finally, Sarah’s eyes opened, and the child let her finger go and dropped his hands, looking between them both with a soft warble.

“I… I learned his name,” she breathed. “At least, I think I did. Grogu?”

His head snapped to face her and his ears lifted, his entire being perking up. Sarah smiled in delight, and Din felt something constrict in his chest at the sight.

“Grogu?” he repeated, feeling oddly disbalanced and undeniably charmed as the kid gave him the same reaction, except then he made graspy-hands at him, a clear request to be picked up. Din Djarin had known the child only as  _ it, Foundling, _ and more recently  _ Greenie, _ for so long that it was strange to know his real name.

He reached out and picked the child up, and settled him on his lap.

“So the kid can talk to you with his mind?” he asked as he looked to Sarah for confirmation.

She met his gaze, still looking a little star-struck.

“I guess. It wasn’t like a normal conversation, it was more... Feeling the suggestion of something, but muffled. I caught a few words, and sometimes some imagery, but I don’t understand the language. I only caught his name because he showed me a memory of someone else calling him by it.”

“This is great. Maybe the kid can show you what his home looks like. Might make it easier to find out where we’re taking him.”

“He might; we’ll keep practicing with this.”

“That’s good,” he answered as he shifted his weight to settle the kid - Grogu, he reminded himself - more comfortably on his lap. He’d never admit to it, but his heart melted a little when the child yawned and leaned back, and trustingly settled against him for a well deserved nap. Cradling him carefully in his hands, he marveled at just how powerful the small tyke was already. He’d seen what he could do first hand several times over.

Then he raised his gaze to look at Sarah, who had plopped herself down to sit cross-legged, and watched the child sleep. Her hair was its usual unruly mess, and her face was smudged with grime from their exercises outdoors in the dusty rock crags.

Both of them could use whatever it was their strange powers were, and it occurred to him that she was also likely to be targeted by the Imps if they were to find out about her abilities, if they didn’t already know. If the child could already do what he did, he wondered what she might accomplish with proper training to guide her abilities.

It was a little awe inspiring to think about the possibilities of just how formidable and deadly a warrior she could become.

“You’re staring again,” she said off-handedly, not lifting her gaze from the child.

“Just thinking. You know, if we find the kid’s kind, the Jedi might be willing to train you, too. I think they’d consider you one of them.” He frowned as her face lost it’s lazy smile, and she seemed to close herself off for a moment before her expression relaxed.

“Probably not. I wasn’t raised in their society; I don’t know much more than what the old legends tell, and I’m guessing a lot of it is made-up, but I’m pretty confident that it’s true they had their own sort of creed. It sounds like this little guy was born into it and spent time with them. He showed me some kind of room with others in it, someone else using the Force to move things. A lesson, I think. It wasn’t a very clear memory - there weren’t enough details to draw any useful information from,” she added, heading off the question he’d been about to ask.

He almost wondered if she’d read his mind, then assured himself that wasn’t so. He trusted her promise not to use any of her tricks on him without making it known.

“Well done, kid. Grogu,” he amended softly, gently patting the sleepy child with a hand.

He looked up when he realized Sarah’s attention had shifted to him, and he wasn’t sure what to think of the avid curiosity shining in her bright eyes. “What?”

“I wonder if it’d work on you. Then maybe you could understand him better, too. Might also be useful if we’re in a pinch and I could send you messages or something. Is that even a thing? I have no idea. I want to figure out if contact is required or if it can be done from a distance… I’m thinking its the latter,” she added, and grimaced as she brought a hand up to brush her fingers against the smooth skin of her neck. Her bruises had long since healed thanks to the bacta spray, but he remembered the purple-black handprint vividly. “Do you want to try?”

Din Djarin didn’t know how to answer her. He opened his mouth, shut it, then opened it again and still couldn’t find the words to speak.  _ Did _ he want to try it? He’d like being able to talk with the kid for certain, but he wasn’t sure how comfortable he was at the idea of someone invading his mind. What would be revealed? Anything? Nothing? Would they be able to catch stray thoughts? Would it hurt?

He supposed there was only one way to find out, and if this was what his clanmates needed to further the training of their own abilities, he was willing to offer himself for their practice.

She was still watching him, waiting calmly for his answer while he collected his thoughts, and he silently appreciated her patience.

“I guess it’s worth a shot. You think there’s any risk?”

“I absolutely think there’s risk. This is entirely new to me. I’ve only ever tricked people, I’ve never tried to actually send some kind of message to them.”

“Some of your suggestions felt more like a message. The ones with words. Probably the same sort of… thing,” he finished lamely, grasping at straws and resolutely ignoring the nature of the most recent ones he’d experienced. If she was guessing at this, he was entirely in the dark. His only experiences were limited to witnessing what it was the two of his wards had done.

“I guess we try it like Grogu did. Here,” she offered, then extended her hand towards him.

“You want to try now?” He felt his heart skip a beat, then accelerate.

“I don’t need nap time like the kid does. Do you?” she teased.

“No. Let me settle him into bed first, just in case something goes wrong.”

She withdrew her hand with a sheepish expression, almost guilty looking.

“Good plan,” she agreed. He ignored her gaze as he stood and adjusted Grogu in his arms, and smiled to himself when the kid stirred and blinked sleepily up at him. He fell right back asleep once he was settled into his hammock.

Din lingered there with him for a few moments, letting the kid hold onto his gloved finger. When he couldn’t stall any longer and he was certain the child would remain fast asleep, he turned and strode back to the young woman who waited for him, now standing.

It was odd to think of her as a clan member, especially with the way she looked. Her short stature and petite frame was nothing like the imposing warriors he had grown up around, and there was the obvious fact she did not wear the armor unique to the Mandalorian culture.

There was a strength to her though, one he had witnessed first-hand when he’d first met her and in her willingness to keep up since. And that didn’t take into account her strange abilities. Sorcery, the Forgemaster had called it. He thought it was an apt description.

He stopped within arm’s reach of her. She held both her hands out to him, palms up, and he placed his over hers. They dwarfed hers considerably, and he curled his fingers slightly around them, her skin a distant coolness against the well worn leather of his gloves.

“What now?”

“Close your eyes and tell me if you feel anything, I guess.”

He did so after watching her do the same, and waited as he strained his senses to sense any shift, any difference in his thoughts. Would he feel the intrusion? He had yet to pinpoint a specific sensation when she had planted suggestions in his mind during their recent training sessions, but he had been able to recognize something wasn’t his now and then. Things that felt foreign and out of place, a break in the pattern of his usual thoughts.

For a short time, nothing happened.

Then, he felt it. Like a gentle pressure probing at his mind, he instinctually rallied against it without thinking and heard Sarah gasp.

“What’s wrong?” he asked as he opened his eyes in alarm. She sounded like she was in pain.

“Good news, but still, ouch. You  _ rebuffed _ me,” she said, looking excited rather than offended. “That means you should be able to learn to block someone trying to pry.”

Good news, indeed. It granted him more relief than he was willing to admit to.

“I’ll… Try not to do it again,” he offered, though he wasn’t certain how. It had been a knee-jerk reaction.

She shut her eyes to concentrate, and he belatedly followed suit even as he felt the alien pressure probing at him once again. It felt distinctly more cautious this time, the pressure slowly increasing as he fought to maintain his composure and let it happen. He trusted  _ her, _ but he didn’t necessarily trust this unknown force she was learning to wield.

“I can feel your distrust,” she murmured softly. “I will not hurt you.”

“It’s not you I’m worried about,” he explained, and squeezed her hands once to add assurance.

“Try to relax. You’re tense.”

“Relaxing isn’t my strong suit.”

“It’s not mine, either.”

The pressure built up, then receded, before it returned again as if taking a new angle. This time, he tried to let himself relax into the sensation, and ignored the instinctual alarm he felt rise up at the touch of this absurd unknown.

In the next moment, he heard her voice as if she spoke directly into his ear, clearer than he had ever been able to hear it through his helmet’s audio feedback.

_ ‘...working? Is it working yet?’ _

_ ‘It’s working,’  _ he thought.

He heard her gasp aloud, but he also  _ felt _ her surprise, rippling over him like a second skin. The sensation was so foriegn and unexpected that he withdrew, startled. The pressure vanished, and Sarah looked up at him with bright, sparkling eyes.

“It worked,” she breathed.

“It did.”

“Can we try again?” she asked, excitement barely contained. 

“Go for it.”

It was faster this time, but no less unnerving. First the gentle, prodding pressure, and then suddenly he could hear her speaking to him. The words came with a ripple of excitement that clashed against his discomfort.

_ ‘Can you hear me?’ _

_ ‘I can.’ _ He realized she could feel his unease, because no sooner had the sensation bloomed back into being, he felt her immediate response; a soothing reassurance and a strong flare of intense gratitude and pride. It helped.

_ ‘This is SO cool. I don’t know what to say.’ _

As fast as he thought of ideas of what they could try, he knew she’d picked up on them. Before he could even have thought to voice anything aloud or ‘speak’ in his own mind, she had answered him by choosing from the jumble.

_ ‘A memory would be a good start. What are you curious about?’ _

He was curious about many things, but he wasn’t sure what she’d be willing to share.

_ ‘Anything. You have my trust.’ _ Something rippled over his focus as she spoke, and he sucked in a sharp breath. It was a deep sensation, powerful and vast enough to drown in and difficult to put to words, yet somehow he knew it was the feeling of what trust  _ meant _ to her. To Sarah trust was knowing, understanding. She would let him learn about her as she actively prevented all others from doing. There was no facet of her character she would hide from him, even as he got the distinct sense there were things she wasn’t eager - or not yet ready - to share.

_ ‘How about a happy memory,’ _ he suggested, thinking that he didn’t want to pry.

For a moment there was nothing but her thoughtful presence in his mind, and then… He saw. Like being pulled into a dream, colors and light bloomed in his vision and he could  _ see _ the events unfolding. It was touched on the edges by a distant mirth. She felt clever about her choice of memory, certain it would please him.

It took him a moment to recognize the scenery - and it was distinctly absurd to recognize himself in it, and from a much shorter vantage point than he was used to viewing from. There was a hot, stinging pain on his palm - hers, he reminded himself belatedly - and a pleasantly warm grip wrapped around cold fingers as blood mingled between their hands. From her eyes he viewed the cockpit of the Razor Crest, and he felt her distant delight at learning the name of his ship even as the memory unfolded. His distorted voice came to him from the memory of her own ears, and Din felt a warmth bloom in his chest that wasn’t his own.

_ “You have my trust, you have my word. By honor we’re bound, and by blood we’re joined; A clan of three. Will you accept this place of belonging?” _

A wave of overwhelmingly strong sensations suddenly rocked him to the core, like his entire world had been upended and the floor dropped out from under him. Before he could make sense of the confusing jumble of complex emotions that were not his, Sarah cut the memory off. He could feel her present-time alarm and embarrassment at her worry over revealing too much; she felt things so very strongly, and she was worried he would be uncomfortable in the face of them.

He opened his eyes, and without thinking pulled the young woman forward until she bumped against his chest then wrapped his arms around her. Her presence withdrew from his mind, and she opened her eyes to blink up at him, gaze wide.

“You don’t make me uncomfortable,” he murmured, wanting to reassure her. His voice came out hoarse for the first few words, choked by emotion, something he wasn’t used to.

“I didn’t mean to share quite  _ that _ much, I’m sorry,” she mumbled.

“It’s alright. This was good practice for you. For both of us.”

He swallowed thickly when her arms slowly wrapped around his waist, then relaxed, and stood at ease. He had not shared an embrace like this with someone since he was a Foundling, under his adoptive father’s care.

He almost wished she was still forging the telepathic connection so she would know just how much this meant to him. How had these two individuals managed to so thoroughly upend his entire world in so short a time? He’d barely known the kid or her for a few days before each had managed to worm their way into his life, into his heart. It was a distinctly pleasant sort of feeling to have a sense of belonging, of having this bond of kinship so far away from his home covert.

“Do you want to try?” He could hear the tentativeness in her voice.

“Sharing an image?”

“Yeah.”

“Whenever you’re ready,” he murmured, and closed his eyes.

This time when the pressure of her presence washed over his mind, the connection was made swiftly like a sponge absorbing water. He silently marveled at how quickly he was becoming used to something so phenomenal.

_ ‘It is kind of freaky how natural this feels,’ _ she shared. Something else lingered on the edges of her words. Whatever it was, she was withholding it from his attention.

He felt her withdraw slightly as she noticed him noticing, and he felt his chest shake with a short, silent laugh. The entire exchange happened in the span of a heartbeat, and he quickly drew his focus back to the task at hand.

_ ‘What do you want to know?’  _ he thought, figuring to offer her the same choice she’d granted him. If she was willing to indulge his curiosity, he would meet hers.

Several thoughts flashed across his mind that weren’t his, too fast to track, and there was a distinctly sharp edge to some of them as Sarah struggled to maintain her focus and keep from dumping her every thought on him.

After a brief struggle that threatened to turn into a headache, she settled.

_ ‘What’s the most beautiful place you’ve ever seen?’ _ her question was touched with longing; she loved to see the worlds, and marveled at even the simplest of nature’s beauty.

Din didn’t have to think for long. He picked a memory he thought she’d enjoy, then steeled himself and tried to focus on it, recalling the scene of a stormy sunset over a vast freshwater ocean. Palm trees and bushy foliage crowded the edges of his vision, and he tried to remember what the air had smelled like. The tang of fertile soil and decaying growth, of fresh air and a damp breeze. Above the horizon thick, voluminous clouds crowded and churned, lightning strikes flashing even as the planet’s vivid sun half-vanished behind them. The sky was drawn into a sharp contrast of dark grays and stormy blues, set against the vivid oranges and brilliant red-gold of the sunset’s color. It had been one of the nicer planets he’d been to for collecting a bounty.

As the scene came to life in his mind’s eye, he could feel Sarah’s quiet awe and her piqued curiosity at learning of his profession.

_ ‘I see it.’  _ It felt like she breathed the soft words in his ear, and it sent a pleasant tingle down his spine he hoped she didn’t notice.

She didn’t, but she did notice his guard being raised up, and it was answered by a bewildered curiosity as she wondered what had upset him.

_ ‘Nothi--’ _ he cut himself off even as she recognized the lie he’d been about to think.

_ ‘Should we stop?’ _

_ ‘No, it’s fine.’ _ It was hard to admit he’d just been distracted. Only for a moment.

He could  _ feel _ her laughter, a bright warmth that shimmered around him.

_ ‘It happens. How aware of your surroundings while we do this are you?’ _

Her question jarred him unpleasantly, and he abruptly realized he  _ wasn’t _ aware of his surroundings - not more than the immediate sensation of holding her and the ground beneath his feet. Before his alarm could turn into self loathing at so lowering his guard, he felt Sarah’s firm reassurance.

_ ‘We’ll work on that, then. I can still hear the things happening around me. I lose focus on this if I open my eyes for too long, though.’ _

He hadn’t noticed her attention wavering, but maybe he just wasn’t sensitive enough to tell yet. As his focus honed in on her, he began to notice more details about the presence lurking at the edges of his mind. She felt comfortable with exploring this newfound ability, and with him. She radiated a bone-deep contentment and satisfaction from being held in his arms, a simple embrace she had long since missed from her childhood. She was cold on the spaceship constantly with its metal walls and cooling air vents that kept the mechanical things at optimal temperature, and it was nice to share his warmth.

_ ‘Sarah.’ _ He wasn’t sure if her own thoughts were beginning to wander, or if he had managed to unintentionally pry deeper into her mind, but he didn’t think she meant to be sharing something so personal. On the other hand, he was glad to find out about her discomfort - it was a simple enough thing to make sure she was warm enough. A good cloak or coat would do the trick, or a thicker shirt than what they could buy in a tropical planet’s market. Just as he began to wonder why she didn’t tell him sooner, he had his answer.

It came as a short, brief flash of squirming discomfort she clearly tried to ignore and was mildly mortified he noticed.

_ ‘It’s not a bad thing to let family take care of you,’  _ he admonished.  _ ‘Cold fingers don’t shoot as well as warm ones,’ _ he added, in order to appeal to her logic and sense of duty. 

He smiled to himself when he felt her mess of emotions in response, before she wrangled herself back into sorts. He got the gist that she was mildly jealous of his ability to keep his thoughts focused, and relieved by the same token that she benefited from it. It made her feel safer exploring this. She’d noticed that he let little slip past his guard.

_ ‘Practice,’ _ he answered, even as the word was joined with his relief at her observation. He’d been worried about revealing too much.

_ ‘This is way more intimate than it was with Grogu,’  _ she observed warily.  _ ‘I think it’s because he’s better practiced at controlling the connection.’ _

_ ‘Might also be because he’s a kid?” _ He wondered, recalling her mention the difficulty she’d had understanding him. It could very well have been  _ less _ ability, rather than more. Or, perhaps a difference of species had something to do with it. _ “Let’s call a break,’ _ he suggested, and opened his eyes. In the time it took her to agree, he felt the queerest sensation of being steeped in two worlds - the environment around him that he stood in, and the conversation taking place in his mind. It was like having his focus perfectly divided between two things, and it both unbalanced him and granted him the first glimpse of what it would take to master his control over it.

He could learn this skill, and he would, as he had honed others before it.

He looked down at Sarah as she withdrew from his mind, and she lifted her head to look up at him.

Belatedly he released her, and she stepped back at the same time he did. As she tucked hair behind an ear, she smiled sheepishly.

“That went well, mostly, I think.”

He was cut off from a reply when Grogu burbled and squeaked to get their attention. The kid had woken up, and was looking at the two of them with pricked ears and bright, wide awake eyes. Din Djarin had the distinct impression the kid was amused, or maybe delighted, because that expression was usually reserved for when he saw something he really liked.

“Looks like nap time’s over,” he observed as he walked over to pluck the kid from his hammock.

~*~

When evening fell it found them back outside, and Sarah appreciated the cooler temperature. Almost too cold at first, actually. She had taken to wearing the cloth given to her by the Tusken as a cowl, just far enough over her head it didn’t interfere with her peripheral vision.

That lasted until Din Djarin began to run her through more intense drills, asking her to shoot mid-jump from atop rocks or as she was knocked to the ground with her feet swept out from under her. He’d shown her how to operate her new blaster pistol - it wasn’t much different from her current one, but the safety on it wasn’t intuitive and there was an additional knob for tuning how strong of a bolt she wanted to fire. A longer charge would get her a more powerful blast that extended the distance she could accurately shoot from, but at the cost of additional wait time between how often the gun could fire, and it used more fuel.

It had no safety mechanism for shutting the gun down if it overheated - she had to learn to time the shots on her own without the metal heating up so hot it would burn her fingers. Better to have the option of a burnt hand and a dead opponent in an emergency, as she was instructed, and getting gloves would help.

They heard their visitors before they saw them, but Sarah was still impressed at how close the Tusken Raiders managed to get before announcing themselves in their strange, alien warbles. She holstered her gun and tugged her cowl back up over her cold ears, panting from exertion as she walked over to join Din Djarin. From between the dark rocks shadows moved, and in the dim light of the stars and moon several tall figures approached. Darker shadows moved low to the ground, and Sarah gasped softly as she caught a glimmer of starlight against dull, scaly skin.

She stayed quiet while her companion conversed with them, and watched as one of the large, ground-hugging blobs broke away to run at them. She tensed, but the Mandalorian dropped down to a knee and started rubbing the creature down.

She had the impression of a dog-like creature, and its glossy tongue lolled out of its mouth as it accepted the welcome attention.

“They want us to come with them to their encampment. They are hosting a festival tonight, to celebrate the turn of the season that brings longer nights.”

“I guess we’re going, then. Right? Are we?” Part of her was nervous, but most of her was excited at the prospect of seeing something she had a feeling was a rare sight for outsiders to witness.

“Yes. Take Grogu,” he ordered, standing up and letting the dog-thing run back to its owners. She counted six Tuskens total, and could hear the low, gurgling mewls of at least one or two Bantha hidden somewhere from sight.

She accepted the child in his carrying bag after Din had loosed the straps, then secured him comfortably against her chest instead of her back.

One of the Tusken raiders suddenly filled her vision, and gestured at her and Grogu as he made a strange warbling, grunting noise.

Din turned away from another conversation to carefully intervene, and Sarah unconsciously edged a little behind him as she wrapped her arms around the child.

The helmet bobbed in the dark, and then he turned to her.

“He is pleased you’re wearing their gifts. He’s offered you and the child to sit with him on the lead Bantha of their train; it’s a great honor.”

“What about you?” she asked.

“I’ll walk alongside.”

“Oh. Do… I have to accept?” she asked tentatively, shifting her weight.

“They may consider it an insult if you don’t.”

“Alright, then,” she turned to offer a nod and smile to the stranger, who gurgled roughly at her. At Din’s encouragement, she turned and began following after the robed figure, relieved to hear her friend’s steps following close behind even as he returned to the conversation that had been interrupted.

Sarah decided that even though she didn’t like this planet and its barren tracts of land, she  _ did _ like the Banthas. The creature was huge, a dark blotch against the starry night sky that radiated heat through its long ropes of matted fur. She could smell the creature’s musk as she drew near, and it wasn’t unpleasant. Dusty and kind of sweet smelling, she wondered if it was the animal’s natural scent or if the Tuskens did something to their fur to make it that way.

Her companion clambered up the side of the tall creature, then warbled and barked in three short bursts as he looked down at her. Sarah sucked in a breath and ignored her already sore muscles from her gunslinging acrobatics, then carefully climbed up the side of the creature and used her knees to keep her belly from squishing Grogu against it. It became easier once she reached the saddle and discovered sewn-on hand holds made of hard bone, or maybe antler; it was impossible to tell in the dark.

There wasn’t much room on the saddle even though she recognized it was made to seat at least two, so she awkwardly took a seat directly behind her host. He turned and said something to her with a gesture, but whatever it was it was entirely lost on her.

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand your language,” she answered, and hoped he might understand.

He seemed to, or at least he only warbled once in a dismissive manner, and then with a click and a squeeze of his legs the Bantha lurched forward into its ambling, slow gait.

She looked down to confirm Din Djarin walked beside them, and watched the Mandalorian as they traveled. The starlight reflected faintly off his armor and gave a soft, bluish shimmer to the gray metal that was very pretty. He seemed perfectly at ease, which eventually settled Sarah’s lingering nerves. If he felt they were safe, they probably were, and she turned her attention back to enjoying this rare experience.

The stars, she thought, were maybe the planet’s only other redeeming quality. With no cities nearby and the suns gone down, she marveled at the sight of the nighttime sky. The moon hung round and large, almost full, and ribbons of closer-clusters of stars and distant galaxies tracked across the sky.

“It’s beautiful,” she said without thinking, and jolted when her riding companion barked and warbled something long and complicated at her. She caught the movement from the corner of her eye, as Din’s helmet turned to look up at them.

She thought maybe he might translate, but he only turned to look back ahead. His gaze returned when the lead rider looked down and barked at him in short succession, gestured quickly with one hand, then pointed to her.

Din was quiet for a moment, then slowly turned his helm to look at her.

“He’s asked that I tell you what he said. He says; the stars may be beautiful, but it cannot compare to the light found in your eyes of water. They shine as the moon does.”

“Oh, um, thank you,” she answered awkwardly, and wondered if this was the same Tusken from before who had offered to make her a wife in the tribe. She  _ really _ hoped it didn’t go anywhere.

Seated on the lead bantha in what was apparently an esteemed place of honor, she had a sinking feeling in her stomach that made it hard to enjoy the rest of their long ride.

When they arrived at the tribe’s camp, it was very sudden. She had been watching for lights in the distance or maybe a splotch of shadows against the starry sky and silver-gray dunes, but she didn’t see anything until they were walking down a steep sand dune past some large rocks, and there it was. It was fairly large, she thought, at least thirty, maybe forty tents visible over the immediate span of flat sand. They were short, squat structures, rounded domes covered in what she assumed were probably animal hides. Some of them had lights glowing from inside, and the air smelled of sweet smoke not unlike the Bantha’s scent. Fires dotted the spaces between tents, providing light and warmth against the cool night, and she gasped when she spotted her first good glimpse at their strange dog-like creatures. They had armor-like skin with rough spines protruding from their back, with short, powerful legs armed with wicked looking claws, and a triangular reptilian face that did not conceal their many sharp teeth. They were  _ adorable. _

They ran alongside what were clearly children, who shouted in their own language and laughed in play. Sarah hadn’t been sure what she was expecting, but somehow this seemed to fit. There were many more Tuskens here, some gathered around the fires while others tended to small crafts or the processing of meat and carcass remains. She saw a new style of robes on figures who wore a different kind of mask than the other Tuskens she had seen, decorated with the glitter of jewels and thin eye-slits which revealed nothing of the faces hidden within.

Their heads were covered in a long, formed cowl that dropped down well past their shoulders, and Sarah got the impression these were the women of the tribe with the way children flocked around them and the serenity of their movements.

She was surrounded by excited chatter and loud, barking shouts that were quickly becoming familiar. She clambored down the Bantha at her host’s cue when they came to a stop, and felt Din’s hands on her waist as he helped her the rest of the way down.

“How’s the kid?” he asked, and peered down at Grogu who was looking around with wide, bright eyes.

“Slept most the way, I’ve made sure he’s stayed warm enough,” she answered, and reached up to stroke one of his soft green ears. He gurgled a nonsensical child’s reply and craned his head back to look up at her, and she smiled.

She brought her attention back to the Mandalorian when his hand settled on her back to turn her around to follow. A group had formed around them, noisy and claustrophobic, full of the strange masks. She recognized the Tusken she had ridden with only because of the way he carried himself as he spoke to Din, then turned sharply and beckoned them to follow. His wicked-looking staff thudded against the sandy ground with each step.

They were brought to a large, oblong structure, luxuriously adorned by their standards; thick piles of furs covered the inside ground and a long, narrow table was piled high with the spoils of their hunts, and an unexpected array of fresh melons and other fruits she didn’t recognize.

There were many Tuskens in the room, laying out the meal and fussing over thin cushions being placed for seating. They had to maneuver around them as she found herself practically herded towards the head of the table, where a pair of Tusken’s sat, a male and female. The woman wore more jewels on her finely woven clothes than Sarah had seen in a lifetime, and the fierce looking warrior beside her had a single large stone hanging around his neck on a braided leather cord. She ignored the dark splotches on it that looked suspiciously like blood. The stone was lumpy and mostly round, a deep fire-orange color that glittered dully in the light with a faint translucence.

The hair on the back of her neck suddenly stood up on end, and Grogu’s ears lifted in interest as they came to a stop before the presumed couple.

A hush fell in the immediate vicinity, the only sounds distant chatter outside and the nearby workers finishing preparations for the coming feast.

It was the woman who spoke, her head tilting until the narrow, dark-shadowed eye slits looked directly at Sarah after a brief, lingering glance to the Mandalorian beside her.

As expected she used the same strange language as the others, though there was a distinct femininity to her voice, the harsh syllables somehow softer, more serene.

Din leaned closer to translate quietly for her benefit, and Sarah’s cheeks turned red as the woman waxed poetic about good omens, fortuitous signs, of great regard for the gift they had been given, and praise for the honorable Mandalorian who had become as a friend to their tribe.

“You killed a dragon?” she whispered during a pause. His helmet tipped once, but it was the only response she got. She made a mental note to ask him about it later.

The woman turned and barked something to her husband, and the Tusken in turn rose and turned sharply about, then vanished out the back door of the shelter. He returned shortly after with another, somewhat shorter warrior, who held a slim wooden box in his hand and stood silently behind his leader.

“She says that you are to be honored and acknowledged as a sister to the tribe, for your gift of water has proven true; the scouting party they sent has returned with the location of a great underground lake they have long been searching for in this region, one of the rare oases this planet holds. It will ensure the survival and comfort of her people for a long time to come.” Sarah shifted her weight from foot to foot, trying to keep a straight face but really just wanting to shrink back and vanish into the crowd. Din paused to let the woman speak, then resumed his translation.

He seemed more hesitant to start this time, as if cautious of what he said to her. Sarah soon found out why.

“She says that there is a prophecy handed down through many generations, that a woman of the stars would lead their people to prosperity, and a blessing of good fortune.” His head jerked sharply at something the woman said next, and it was a suspenseful pause before he cautiously paraphrased for her. “She says that she can feel your power, and that the Force is strong with you and the child both. They believe you are the woman of prophecy,” he finished, and turned to look at her, likely to take in her reaction.

Sarah didn’t have time to form a reply for which she was relieved, because the robed figure that had been fetched stepped up to present the box to her. Din nudged her with his elbow as the woman said something short and brief.

“Open it,” he whispered.

She reached out with all her focus on not letting her hands shake, and carefully lifted the lid. The wood was polished and smooth beneath the pads of her fingers, and it swung open easily on well oiled hinges. Inside the box lay a cushion of deep purple fabric, and on it was nested a strange device. It looked like it may have once been of superior craft, but the badly aged metal was tarnished in gray splotches with areas of deep, pitted built-up she suspected might have rust underneath. It was slim, maybe as long as her forearm, and had a small knob on the side near one end where the narrow cylinder swooped into a short funnel.

She glanced up at the Tusken holding it out to her, then  _ very _ carefully lifted what she assumed was some kind of relic from its case.

The woman resumed speaking, and even Sarah could tell there was an air of contentment in her undulating voice.

“She says it has been in their keeping for six generations, given to them by one who also was a friend to their people. They have been waiting for its owner to arrive.”

“What is it?” she asked, and hoped the question would not be taken as rude. Din didn’t need to translate for her - the woman seemed to understand her just fine, and replied immediately.

“She says it is the weapon unique to your kind. Its mysteries are for you to learn and master.”

Sarah carefully settled the item back down in its box, and accepted it from the Tusken who then stepped back. At a short nod from the taller raider, he backed out in a bow and left them.

That seemed to be the end of the bewildering experience, and Sarah allowed herself to be guided down to a seat on the woman’s right-hand side. Din was allowed to sit beside her, and then the room began to fill with other Tuskens and their accompanying noise. They seemed to be singing, or at least she thought they were judging by the rhythmic way they seemed to repeat similar-sounding patterns of their guttural language. Din did not join in but kneeled calmly at ease with his hands resting on his thighs. Sarah sat awkwardly, her back as straight as she could make it and tried very hard not to let her inner turmoil show.

She wasn’t sure how she felt about being placed on a pedestal and told she was apparently part of some generational prophecy and entrusted with a mysterious relic, and she wondered both if it was true - and what in the worlds she was expected to do next.

The box sat heavy on her lap, gingerly held between her hands to keep it in place, and she turned her attention away from it to focus on her surroundings. At first she wondered if the raiders might remove their unusual masks in order to eat, but they proved to be just as elusive as Din Djarin was - in short order they had removed the black breathing grills that covered their mouths, and Sarah got her first glimpse at what might be hiding behind the ribbons of leather and strange metal goggles.

Gray, stone-like skin and a lipless mouth with sharp teeth, though she was startled to spot a few individuals that looked like they could be human underneath all those layers.

She wondered how her companion was going to participate in the feast, and wasn’t surprised to find he found a way to respect his host’s by carefully slipping small bites of the served food under his helmet. Sarah alternated between feeding Grogu and herself, and made sure the child had his share of the meal.

Long speeches were given by various members of the tribe, some of which Din translated for her and some of which he made no commentary on. Occasionally he was asked to serve as a translator for her, and Sarah was quickly becoming discomfited at the growing suspicion the tribe might view her as the leaderly member of their tiny group.

She was obliged to answer questions about where she came from and what had brought them here, and she carefully navigated conversation in order to satisfy the Tuskens’ curiosity without revealing too much about herself or her companions, and certainly nothing sensitive. Some of the questions were far more personal than she thought polite, and she could tell it did not please Din Djarin to serve as translator. She was certain there were a few times he paraphrased or cut something out. At least once, she was pretty sure he flatly refused.

Her worst fear was left well away, thankfully. No marriage proposals reared their head during the feast, and she was glad she didn’t have to find a polite way to decline. Or, maybe that was something he simply declined on her behalf. If it was, she definitely wouldn’t be mad.

The farther away they got from the ominous beginning of the feast, the more Sarah was able to relax and enjoy the festivities and food. She tried many things, from strange fleshy fruits to tender cooked meats of various creatures native to the planet she had never had before. Grogu had already picked out his favorites and even found a fruit he liked, though it made Sarah despair of the mess she’d have to clean up once they returned to the ship. His hands and face were now sticky with dribbled juices, and he’d decided that her shirt was a good place to wipe them off.

When the feasting was done the men all left the room, many of them taking out the empty dishes and remaining leftovers to pack away. The bowls of fruit remained, as did the various canteens scattered across the table that were filled with a sweet-smelling liquor Sarah had been careful not to actually imbibe of, and instead pretended to sip from her cup.

They tried to make the Mandalorian leave with the other men, but he persuaded them to let him stay in order to serve as a translator for Sarah’s benefit. It embarrassed her, but it also made her relieved she wasn’t going to be left alone in the company of strangers she neither understood nor knew how to behave around.

He was semi-banished to stand back from the group by the hide-covered wall, and remained perfectly still and silent except when asked to translate.

After all the overwhelmingly esoteric topics of before, Sarah was a little relieved that this seemed to amount to a woman’s gathering for small talk and friendly chatter.

The ladies fussed over her and the child as much as over each other, while their leader seemed content to sit in quiet reflection and watch the gathering.

“Is he yours?” she was asked through Din’s helpful translation.

“Not by blood, but he is ours,” she corrected as she gestured behind herself to the stoic Mandalorian. This elicited an excited tizzy from the woman, and suddenly she was being flocked around. They touched her hair and clothes and the necklace she wore, and made tutting noises interspersed with short grunts she recognized as simple noises of expression rather than actual words. One tried to touch Grogu’s face, but Sarah gently turned the hand away while the child put his ears back.

One of the women suddenly scooped up the mass of Sarah’s choppy hair off her neck and made a displeased, warbling sound.

“They want to cut and style it for you,” came the explanation from behind.

“Oh, I, uh, alright,” she agreed, and sat very still as slender fingers began to comb and cut.

“Your hair is a mess, why do you let it stay like this?” She was starting to be able to tell the women apart. It helped that their masks and robes were each uniquely decorated, unlike the warriors who all dressed exactly the same. She didn’t get a chance to answer.

“When we are done, you will be beautiful. You will outshine the moon.”

She blushed as they complimented her fair skin tone, and fussed over Grogu, who was fighting off the sleepies.

As two of the ladies tugged and pulled at her hair and began to shear off sections with a sharp knife, Sarah was relieved to finally direct conversation away from herself.

The women were eager to answer her questions and indulge her curiosity. She learned about the symbolism behind the gems they wore, how each represented some event in their life or sometimes simply the wealth of their family. The women were the leaders of the tribe and responsible for mentoring the children and maintaining their oral histories, while the men saw to the protection, raids, and hunting. Both shared equally in care of the bantha herds.

“There. You are beautiful again, as you should be,” one of the ladies declared with Din’s help, and Sarah was startled when a small, oval mirror was held up for her to see. They had evened her choppy cut into a wavy curtain of layers, and pulled two braids to wrap around the sides of her head. She reached up to touch the small, bejeweled hair clip one of them had tucked into it.

“Thank you,” she murmured.

“Would you share a story with us tonight?” one of the ladies asked, the shortest of their group and the most decorated, second only to the serene matriarch who sipped quietly on her cup of liquor.

“Of course, what kind of story would you like to hear?”

There was an excited titter and a quick exchange of guttural chorts and grunts.

“We would like to know a foreign legend of your people. It has been a long time since a Jedi has graced our tribe with friendly intent.”

_ ‘Oh, that could be a problem,’  _ Sarah thought, but furrowed her brows in thought. She could come up with  _ something _ that should satisfy them.

“I was not born among the Jedi,” she began. Her hands gestured as her voice took on the easy cadence of storytelling. “But I was blessed to know one who knew of them.”

She could practically  _ feel _ Din Djarin’s eyes boring holes into the back of her head. He did not translate for her, as one of the women who understood the common tongue quietly filled the need.

“They were a family friend of long standing, and had seen many children of my mother’s line to adulthood and through old age. They could not speak,” she said as she touched her throat to imply an injury, “and they were so old that they could not see very well past the reach of their hands, but at one time they had been a masterful artist, conjuring elaborate paintings of great detail.”

She went on to describe the legend she had pieced together over the years of visiting the old painter’s house. It was not a particularly exciting story originally, as most of what she had to go off of was the vivid painting of a single scene, its artist unable to tell her of what it represented as he did not write in a language she could read. So she embellished it with her imagination, inspired by the remembered details of a young, robed figure who apparently saved a village from a terrible flood by using the Force to divert the waves of a broken dam around the town. The women were all leaning forward, hanging on every word, entranced by the tale. A threat posed by water was certainly not a novelty to them, but it was the lack rather than the overabundance of which they were used to.

When she finished, she felt tired, and was very happy when the lead woman stood to announce it was time to call an end.

As the women filed out, Din Djarin returned to her side and stood a comfortable distance away.

“So, back to the ship?” she asked, holding back a yawn. Grogu had long since fallen asleep.

“No. We’ve been invited to stay the night. I’ve been assured that the ship won’t be stripped by Jawa’s, they don’t venture this deep into their territory.”

“Ah.” Sarah followed silently as they were led by one of the women outside. The children were all gone and the spaces between tents empty but for a few of the warriors who remained on watch, and tended what few fires they let burn all through the night.

The Tusken stopped at one of the small dome structures, then held the heavy, ragged leather covering the doorway aside to invite them to enter. She grunted something, and waved them in.

The Mandalorian entered without hesitation, having to duck down to enter, and Sarah only had to bend her knees a little bit to follow suit.

The tarp fell shut behind them, and they were left in the dark until her companion turned on a light she hadn’t known he’d had on his helmet. Locating a lantern, he powered it on and hung it up at the top of the tent off one of the poles. It cast a distorted yellow glow around the cozy room. There was a central firepit with warm glowing embers, and obvious signs of recent occupation - personal belongings had been shoved to the side of the tent-like structure and neatly bundled out of their way.

Three piles of furs were arranged around the firepit, and she assumed them to be the beds.

“I have to admit, this looks way more comfortable than the blankets,” she mused as she toed off her boots, and set them close at hand by the head of the right-hand pallet she was closest to. The box she had been given followed suit. She stepped off of the threadbare rugs covering the sandy ground, and into ankle-deep fur.

She glanced over to her companion as he settled down on the pallet opposite her, facing the doorway.

“Is it uncomfortable to sleep in that?” she asked, curious. The helmet turned towards her.

“Not really. I’m used to it.”

“....Do you sleep with the helmet on?”

“I will tonight.”

“I could turn my back.”

He shook his head and she nodded, then unstrapped Grogu’s carrier from her chest and pulled the child free to settle on the furs. He didn’t wake up, a testament to his exhaustion, and she smiled as she settled down fully clothed and wrapped her arms around him protectively.

“It’s not you I’m cautious of,” he explained softly. “They have a habit of barging in on guests come morning.”

“Oh. Do you know that from experience?”

“I do.”

“How did you come to know the Tuskens?”

“I was brought to them by my mentor to learn their language. I’ve had several bounties on Tatooine - it’s a popular planet for thugs to lay low. Negotiating with the sand people made sure I wasn’t the one being hunted for trespassing on their lands, and often bought useful information. They know best how to survive in the harsh climate and how to get around. They can also be trusted to honor their word, unlike some of the colonists.”

“You are a man of many talents,” she observed, and this time couldn’t hold back a yawn.

“Get some rest. We’ll head back at first light.”

“Goodnight, Mando.” There was a delay before he returned the pleasantry, and before Sarah knew it, she was sound asleep.


	5. Brutal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some plot, some training, and some cute Grogu-ness and over-protective Mandalorian.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 12-31-2020: Small edit fix, fixed a mention of temperature change from "rose in temperature" to the correct "DROPPED in temperature" le woops!

This time when Sarah woke, she immediately recognized that she was not _actually_ awake. It was another dream, and being in it abruptly brought back distant memories of the one that had come before. She was on the ship again, which was the first tell-tale sign, and it felt cold and queerly empty of life. She also noticed that small details were off, like missing objects and marks of wear and tear she knew the real Razor Crest didn’t have. She carefully pushed herself up to a sitting position as her senses stretched and strained, breath held.

“You are more formidable than I gave you credit for,” a masculine voice said. She looked around and jumped to her feet, but could not see the source. “Perhaps you would be interested in a proposition?”

She did not answer. Her pockets were empty, and her blaster was nowhere to be seen. Nor were her boots, which meant she had no weapons at hand but her own self. She suspected that meant her dream-weaving intruder had omitted these details… and now probably knew to expect them in her waking life. The idea of it was unnerving.

How much of this place was of their creation, and how much of it was hers?

“No?” the voice prompted at her extended silence. “I know you are a woman of good reason. We can benefit each other.”

Something prodded at her focus, and Sarah recognized with a sharp gasp the feeling of power, of someone trying to plant a suggestion alongside the words her mysterious intruder spoke.

She rebuffed it sharply, then closed her eyes and tried to focus on waking up.

 _‘This is a dream. This is illusion. I am not really here,’_ she thought.

“I will tell you who I am, if you grant me a question in return,” the voice offered.

She definitely wanted to know, but she also didn’t trust them to tell the truth… Or what they might ask in return. She wasn’t dumb enough to agree to such an open-ended bargain.

So instead, Sarah focused on trying to find a thread of energy to follow, searching for the source of the power that thrummed around her and that had tried to invade her mind.

She felt _something,_ but then she let out a sharp gasp as a lancing pain struck her head from behind. Sharp and quick, and then it was over, and she had the feeling she’d deflected another one of their mental probings.

“Nah-ah-ah,” the voice taunted. “You are far too weak and untrained to be attempting something like _that.”_

His words irked her, but she shrugged it off. If she was truly that weak, she had a feeling her opponent wouldn’t be taking this careful, prodding approach to get at her. Her mind was, for the moment, secure. Of this, she was certain. Besides, his opening statement ruined the effect he probably intended. ‘Formidable’ and ‘weak’ didn’t go together. Untrained, however… This was unfortunately true outside of her own experiences and self tutorship.

“With the right guidance, you could become something great, something powerful. I could make that happen, you know. There are so few of our kind left.”

His words held absolutely no appeal to her, but she decided to allow him to believe they did. Maybe it would coax more information.

“What do you mean?” she asked as she feigned an open curiosity meant to appear reluctant, her eyes narrowed as she slowly pivoted on the toes of one foot. The ship was still empty. Then, between one blink and the next, it was suddenly gone - she found herself in the middle of an open field of rocky grasslands, a few scraggly bushes and trees the only adornment of the bleak landscape underneath a hazy, purple sky. It was strange enough Sarah suspected that it was not a representation of an actual place.

A figure appeared before her, starkly silhouetted against the scenery despite a lack of strong light behind him, his features indistinguishable.

Something nagged at her, and Sarah thought maybe she’d met this person before, but couldn’t place who or when or where that might have been.

“You are weak now, but you could become stronger. I could teach you to wield the Force to accomplish great feats - You crave excellency and power, I can feel it rolling off of you. You want to succeed, to win.”

He was right, but not in the ways she figured he was assuming.

“I’ve come this far on my own. What makes you think I need you?” she asked, hyper aware of every sensation. She could not smell anything, not even a hint of fresh air or sun-baked soil, but she could feel the ground beneath her bare feet 

“You’ve tapped into but a fraction of what you could be,” the voice hissed, and lifted a hand. She jumped when lightning crackled around slender, boney fingers, briefly illuminating a glimpse of dark eyes and the suggestion of a masculine face beneath the deep hood. All at once a series of lightning bolts shot down from the sky and impacted the ground around her. The hair on every inch of her body raised up from the electricity in the air, her skin over-warm from the dry, crackling heat that lingered long after the lightshow died off.

It gave her an idea.

This place was clearly an illusion - and yet aspects of it were real enough. Real enough to leave bruises on her neck the last time she’d woken from this absurd nightmare.

And illusions were her _specialty._

She wasn’t sure it’d work or if he’d be able to prevent her, but she gave her all into fashioning an image in her mind of a variety of common creatures she had met over the years and some she’d made up entirely from scratch. She deliberately avoided anything from recent planets she had visited, just in case he tried to use them as a way to place her location.

He was speaking to her, and she wished she could hear what he was saying, but she had to maintain focus if this was going to work.

So she only pretended to listen as she added the life-like details, of heavy beasts that sunk into the ground with each step, of the snorts and breaths and the general noises they made.

When she felt ready, she started small. A single ra’gurl - an oversized, rabbit-like creature with sharp fangs - appeared off in the distance behind her enemy. It sat back on its haunches to look at them with a wiggling nose.

“Whatever it is you think you will be able to accomplish, it will not work,” he declared in a sharp, raised voice, and this time she heard him. She’d caught his attention, so she figured that must mean he could sense her using the Force to weave her will into being, but he didn’t seem to recognize _what_ it was she was doing.

With a grim smile, Sarah let loose her imagination. All around them a variety of beasts appeared, dangerous beings that immediately began to attack each other or chase after the assortment of prey she interspersed amongst them. The stranger whirled around at the commotion, and Sarah imagined the sky opening up in a downpour of rain and thunder, turning the ground beneath their feet into unsteady, muddy footing. Visibility dropped to a matter of feet in seconds.

“No!” he cried, and her vision rippled like the world was distorted through warped glass, a battle of control for who could define this strange place they occupied. The beasts rampaged around her, paying her no notice while her opponent was forced to use his own abilities to ward off any creatures that put their sights on him. She took a moment to observe what he did through the sheets of rain, as he used the Force to throw them back or drive the heads of larger creatures into the ground, then she took her chance to run.

She imagined leaving, of being unnoticed, lost within the chaos around her. She was an insignificant speck in the universe, a drop in a vast ocean, impossible to discern as an individual. The ground beneath her feet warped and shuddered, and she thought she might succeed in her escape. She felt herself begin to disconnect from the environment. She could taste the promise of freedom.

Then there was a hand around her throat that brought her to a painful halt as her feet skidded out from under her, and a burning heat in her face as a beam of brilliant red light was brought close to her skin. It thrummed and pulsated like a blaster’s energy bolt, yet remained static and in place. Water hissed off of it in great plumes of steam, and made it hard to breath or to see anything but the blinding, too-close light. Against her expectations it did not seem to radiate much heat, but she didn’t think that’d be the case were she to be unfortunate enough to touch it.

“I will kill you for your folly. You cannot outmatch my power.”

“You obviously need me or I’d already be dead”, she gasped, her voice a hoarse whisper. “I can feel your fear,” she added, then reached up to clamp a hand on his wrist and glared at the shrouded face she could not see. “What is it you so dread? Failure? Your own limitations?” She grasped at straws as she spread her awareness aggressively outwards, unable to glimpse more than the most basic of his emotions; they were powerful, rotten things that were unpleasant to touch.

He was silent for several long moments while she struggled to free herself, and then he threw her down on the mud. She rolled onto her back just in time to see the tip of his deadly sword lower towards her face, and stop a hair's breadth away from her nose. Sarah swallowed, and held very, very still. She wasn’t certain if he _could_ kill her in the dream or not, and she wasn’t keen to find out.

She followed the length of the energy beam up to its wielder’s hand, taking note of what he held - a long and slender metallic object with a slightly fluted end. It was a vastly different aesthetic, but somehow she knew it was the very same sort of weapon as what the Tuskens had recently gifted her.

At least she knew what it was, now.

Her eyes flicked up to the dark hood.

“You know _nothing_ of what you speak,” he snarled, as boiling anger suffused his words and made the air around him pulse with waves of the furious, bubbling energy. With a start, she realized it was not unlike how she’d felt when Grogu had been using the Force, but it felt nothing like the pleasant warmth and light, comforting presence the child had exuded. “Now tell me where to find the child, and I might choose to spare your life. Perhaps I’ll take you with us.”

“What child?” she asked, her words laced with a powerful emphasis on misdirection. She did not know about any children, certainly none she called her own. And he did not need to concern himself with such inconsequential details. He did not need to question her at all.

The hand lowered a fraction as if the stranger wavered, and then he pressed the tip of it deep into her shoulder.

Sarah screamed.

In the next instant she was being shaken awake, once again back in the familiar Tusken hut. Her fingers clawed frantically at the place the sword had impaled her. Din Djarin had her by the shoulders. As soon as he saw her eyes open he shifted to wrap one arm behind her to support her back, then used his free hand to snatch at the cowl she still wore, and ripped it off of her.

“Hold still. Where are you hurt?” he asked briskly.

“Wh-where’s Grogu?” Sarah gasped as she looked around wildly, disoriented from her abrupt waking, terrified she may have injured the child in her sleep. She struggled to keep hold of what she’d learned in the dream, and repeated the most important facts she could remember over and over, to commit them to memory before it could slip from her grasp entirely.

“He’s right here.” Din angled his torso so she could see the child where he sat on the furs, rubbing at his sleepy little eyes as he watched her with what she thought might be concern. “Where are you hurt?” he repeated, folding aside the collar of her tunic.

“I- I don’t know if I am, but he burned my shoulder,” she stammered. Though the pain had been excruciating, she now realized it hadn’t followed her into waking this time. Her throat was sore, however. Though the memory of burning flesh and agony lingered all too fresh in her mind, her shoulder did not actually hurt.

“The bruising is back,” he announced softly. “Take your shirt off.”

There was a commotion outside their abode now, and his helmet whipped around as a Tusken raider ducked into the tent and spoke rapidly at them.

Din barked a reply then turned back to her as the Tusken backed out.

“Off,” he repeated.

Sarah complied, cloth-bound chest heaving with uneven breaths as she yanked it off over her head. She was relieved to find her shoulder unmarked.

Gloved fingers prodded at her skin, then turned her head this-way-and-that as he examined her.

Sarah looked down when a tiny green hand settled on her thigh, and Grogu met her gaze with a silent question.

“I’m alright,” she promised him, then offered a reassuring smile.

“No, you’re not,” Din argued. “But you will be. Let’s get you some water. Or’ahk is fetching their medicine woman.”

“Or’ahk?” she asked.

“The Tusken that came to check on us.”

He turned away as if to stand up, but Sarah quickly reached out to grab his arm. She didn’t want to be left alone on the furs, and she also wanted to relay what she could still remember in case the memories faded.

“He didn’t learn anything. I couldn’t see his face, I tried, I really did,” she said as her eyes closed. “I think I may have met him before. He seems to know me, or at least of me. He… He had a sword made of light. Its what he burned me with.”

“A laser blade?” he asked, frowning.

“Yeah.” She reached up to touch the spot where it had touched her in the dream. “I wasn’t able to escape the dream, but I was able to manipulate things in it. I think he’s angry about that. He definitely wasn’t expecting me to be able to resist him.”

Both of them looked up as the flap to their lodging was thrown aside and a stooped Tusken entered. She did not have to crouch, hunched forward as she was, and her ambling, shuffling gait gave the impression of either injury or great age. Sarah was betting on the latter.

She did not speak, only walked over and dropped to the ground in front of Sarah, and idly shooed Grogu out of the way with a gnarled gray hand. Her fingers flashed with a collection of rings in both primitive and modern make. Some were set with glittering gems.

Din Djarin shifted aside to give them space and reached out to steady Grogu as the child crawled into his lap. Sarah scooted to face the woman, and felt her throat constrict.

When the gray hand reached up as if to place a palm on her forehead, she recoiled, the hair on the back of her neck standing up on end.

“What are you doing?” she asked, panicked. She could feel a now very familiar pressure in the air, and it was coming from the woman.

The medicine woman did not answer, only waited patiently with her hand raised.

“I don’t think she can speak,” Din supplied, but asked the woman a question in her native tongue which she summarily ignored. Maybe she just couldn’t _hear._

Uneasy, Sarah slowly leaned back into a straight sitting position, goosebumps covering her exposed skin as the wrinkled hand settled over her head. The Tusken’s palm was feverishly warm, and a cool pressure against her mind caused Sarah to suck in a sharp breath as alarm straightened her spine.

The elder gasped and withdrew, then _tutted_ at her.

When she spoke, it was so faint that Din had to lean forward to understand what was said in her soft, hacking grunts. Without taking his eyes off the woman, he translated for her.

“She says that there is nothing she can do for you that you would not be able to do better yourself. She is sensitive to the Force, but she cannot wield it as you can.”

“Can you tell me how to prevent this from happening?” she tried, half-way desperate.

The elder shook her head slowly, then turned her attention to Sarah’s neck. Her hacking, wet voice filled the space between them.

“She says that you are touched by a tainted thread. Perhaps if you remove it, you will be troubled no more. Do you know what that means?” he asked her, a shift in the cadence of his voice letting her know it was his own question, not the woman’s.

“No, but I’m going to guess it has to do with the Force.”

The Tusken grunted an affirmative.

“Ow,” she blurted on reflex when sharp, boney fingers prodded none-too-gently at her bruised skin. From her robes the woman withdrew a rusted tin can decorated with scrawling lines of engraving. She handed it to the Mandalorian to open for her, then scooped out a generous helping of the strangely scentless salve it contained. Sarah tipped her chin up to allow it to be spread over her neck. She winced, the corners of her eyes scrunching, but she otherwise managed to hold still.

The wet grunts of the woman’s voice were broken mid-sentence by a hacking, painful-sounding cough. She breathed heavily for several moments, laboring to catch her wind again, then hoarsely finished what she’d been saying.

“She says it will heal the bruises, and that she will pray to her ancestors to offer you protection.”

She spoke again and Din looked at Sarah, then turned back to the woman and answered.

“What did she ask?” Sarah questioned, having become familiar enough with the Tusken’s strange language to catch the faint difference in their tone of voice.

“She wanted to know if it is only your dreams that you are plagued by. I told her it’s so far only happened when you’re sleeping.”

The woman reached up and touched the center of Sarah’s forehead with the tip of one finger, and labored to force out another line of words.

“Your mind is formidable, take strength in the quality of your defense. She can do no more for you, but has faith you will find the answer on your own.”

“Thank you,” Sarah murmured, both unnerved and relieved. She burned with a multitude of questions, and wasn’t sure which to start with.

She didn’t even get the chance to pick.

The woman struggled to her feet, and Din rose to offer the elder a supportive arm after passing Grogu to Sarah. She watched the armored warrior walk the old woman back outside, and caught the sounds of quiet, grunted conversation between him and someone else.

By the time he returned, she had pulled her shirt back on and wrapped herself in her cowl. Grogu was settled comfortably in her lap and played with the hem of her sleeves, her arms loosely caged around him.

“We have to leave now.”

“They’re worried I’ll bring something down on them,” Sarah guessed. Din was silent for a moment, then the helmet dipped down in a short nod. He reached up and took down the dim lantern above their heads, and set it on the floor while Sarah pivoted where she sat to pull her boots on. She settled Grogu into his carrier and strapped him onto her chest, then stood waiting by the door while Din Djarin straightened their pallets and returned the lantern back to where he’d originally found it. She saw him leave something on a box, probably a gift in thanks for the hospitality they’d been afforded she figured, and then he joined her at the door and ushered them out.

They were led out of the encampment by a small escort, the same number of Tuskens who had come to fetch them yesterday. It was still full dark outside, though the moon she could see was a hair’s breadth away from touching the horizon line. She figured daybreak couldn’t be terribly far off, but then again, she wasn’t familiar with Tatooine’s cycles of day and night.

This time she and Din were given their own Bantha to ride, positioned in the middle of the single-file train with three Bantha’s before and behind them. She tried not to, but her exhaustion found her leaning into his back as she curled over Grogu to protect him from the cool night air, her arms cushioning the space between them in the saddle. Tatooine’s twin suns were just beginning to show by the time the ship came into sight, and the Tuskens let them off at the far end of the rocky crags, much farther away than where they’d first picked them up.

She didn’t complain when the Mandalorian turned to help her down, and she offered an affectionate pat to the beast who had carried them, whispering a quiet thank-you.

The sand people turned to go without further ceremony, though one of them warbled out a loud cry and shook his staff in the air before he turned back around in his saddle. They stood there watching the group amble off for a bit, then Din began the long walk back towards the ship.

“I’m wondering why he can bruise me, but the energy beam didn’t leave a lasting mark,” she said quietly. Grogu was snoring softly, and she stepped as smoothly as she could to avoid waking him. It also gave her something to focus on and help distract her from recent events.

“Your guess is as good as mine. Might be that he can only hurt you directly, not through something else.”

“I think this is the same kind of weapon he used.” Sarah held up the box containing the metal device she’d been given. He turned to look at it briefly, then faced forward again.

“I wouldn’t try using it until we find someone to look it over. Looks busted - might be unstable.”

Sarah nodded, and was quiet until they stood at the ship’s side door and waited for the ramp to lower.

“I think it goes both ways. In the dream. He’s just as vulnerable as I am.”

Din Djarin turned to look at her, and she wished she knew what he was thinking.

“Don’t try anything foolish. I can’t help you fight in there.”

Sarah pursed her lips as they walked up the ramp and entered the cool, dry air of the Razor Crest’s interior.

“But you do hear me scream. Did you hear anything else before that?”

“Not much. Grogu woke me up, I think the kid knew something was wrong. You were muttering in your sleep before you started thrashing, but it wasn’t anything understandable.”

“I guess next time I’ll go right to the screaming part before he gets a chance to try anything.”

“Do you think he can do this while you’re awake?” Din asked as he pressed the button on his vambrace that closed the ship’s door.

“I think it’s probably _possible,_ but not probable. I think he’s only getting as far as he is because my guard is lowered while I sleep. I didn’t have the ward stones with me when we were at the Tusken’s camp.”

“Ward stones?”

“The crystals I set out. The ones I use for focusing. They help.”

“We won’t make that mistake again. How many do you have?” he rummaged in the cabinet while Sarah settled Grogu down on the ground to let the kid decide where he wanted to go, and smiled a bit as she watched him waddle around, exploring. 

“I’ve got a bunch of different crystals, but only four of the quartz. Most of them aren’t useful for… Something like this. It would probably be a good idea to pick up more. Fortunately, they’re not terribly expensive if you can find somewhere that sells them, just heavy to haul around all the time.”

She watched as Grogu made his way over to the Mandalorian, his head craned up to watch him dish out their breakfast onto the only two tray-plates the ship stocked. She had to smother an unexpected laugh when the child lifted his hands, and a chunk of meat zoomed off the table into them. Din’s helmet whipped around and down to see what had happened, and Sarah lost it.

She walked over and picked the child up.

“Well, someone’s hungry,” she mused.

“I can see that. Good job, kid.”

Grogu burbled happily, and continued to gnaw on his meat cube. He had sand sticking to his skin that Sarah carefully brushed off, and grimaced at the tacky residue.

“Someone needs a bath soon, he got all sticky from the fruit.”

Grogu raspberried at her, and Sarah huffed.

“I thought you _liked_ playing in the water.”

“Bathtime isn’t the same as playtime,” Din pointed out.

“No,” she conceded, “but I can still make bathtime fun for him.”

“Eat,” he ordered, as he turned and thrust one of the trays at her.

“Yes, oh-bossy-one.” She heard his soft huff and smiled as she took her food to the crate that had become a customary seating spot for her. She was surprised when he sat down next to them, though she didn’t expect him to start taking bits of food off her plate to offer them to Grogu for her.

“I don’t need coddling, you know.”

“I wouldn’t have bothered taking you with us if you did.”

“I’m glad you did.”

“That makes two of us. You’re good for him,” he added, and nodded at the child settled happily between them.

“What about you?” she questioned. His helmet snapped up to look at her.

“You’re good company.”

Sarah smiled, then smacked the hand that reached for her plate with her fork, mostly just to mess with him.

“He’s still eating,” she pointed out. Grogu was looking between them with perked ears, gnawing on a cube of meat.

“He’ll be done with it soon enough.”

“And I’ll be happy to offer him some food while you go eat your own meal. I’m fine. You don’t need to hover.” She nodded over to the abandoned tray he’d left out.

Her companion gave a beleaguered sigh.

“I’m not hovering.”

“Then go eat.”

“Now who’s bossy?” He stood to go pick up his food. She watched as he made his way to the ladder, and shortly vanished into the upper level of the ship.

Sarah was startled from her ruminations by Grogu when he placed a sticky hand on her wrist, and she felt a now-familiar brush against her mind. She almost resisted at first, then quickly relaxed into it.

It was so very different from the connection she’d shared with Din Djarin; Grogu’s thoughts were alien and difficult to decipher, but she understood the sense of his emotions clearly. He was concerned for her, and she also thought maybe appreciative. He liked the food.

“I’m glad it tastes good, Grogu,” she said as she smiled. The child made an expression that looked undeniably like a smile as his ears raised.

Abruptly, an image flickered over Sarah’s focus, but was gone too quickly for her to know what it had been.

She handed him another bit of food and set hers aside, then moved the child onto her lap to give him her full attention.

“What’s up?” she asked, and offered him a finger to grasp. Tiny clawed hands wrapped around her pale skin, soft and warm with a surprisingly firm grip.

She closed her eyes to better focus, and this time when the image appeared in her mind’s eye, Sarah could make sense of it.

She was looking at herself and Din Djarin standing in the middle of the Razor Crest’s hull, not far from where she sat now, and it took her a moment to realize the strange vantage point came from the child’s hammock. There was a happy, bubbling warmth which suffused the imagery as the child watched his caretakers share an embrace, and then the memory faded away only to be replaced by a jumble of words she couldn’t make sense of and wished she could understand.

She felt Grogu’s frustration in response, before it was quickly replaced by a calm patience one would not expect from an ordinary child.

Before she could ask a question, a new image appeared in her mind.

She knew this wasn’t a memory he shared, because Sarah was absolutely certain it had never happened. She thought perhaps it was the child’s way of offering a suggestion of what to do. To what end she wasn’t certain, though she felt his urgency.

 _‘I’m not sure what you’re trying to say,’_ she thought with a frown. It didn’t make any sense to her.

The child burbled and sighed.

A new image rippled to replace the old one, and she was again looking at herself and Din Djarin. This time, they were sitting cross-legged across from each other, their hands held over knees in a meditative pose, fingers pinched. There were no details of their surroundings, but the vague grayness led her to believe Grogu meant for it to be them in the ship. 

She took his burst of happiness as confirmation.

Did he want them to meditate together?

A flash of fierce delight, and then the connection abruptly ended and she opened her eyes to find Grogu wiggling his fingers at her with one reaching, grasping hand. Then, he turned his palm and placed it to his head, and shocked her when he dramatically flopped backwards.

The alarmingly loud, squealing _blergh_ noise he made brought a clatter of metal and an alarmed Mandalorian jumping down the ladder chute before Sarah even had time to sit the child back up, bemused.

“He’s fine!” she promised, and held up a hand as if it could slow the oncoming freight train of what she could only guess was at least a few hundred pounds worth of muscle, armor, and overprotective Mandalorian. “He’s just trying to communicate something to me.”

Din Djarin’s steps slowed only a fraction and he was by their side quickly, looking down at them.

“What is it?” he asked, tensed.

“I think he has an idea for how I can protect myself in the dreams. He showed me a picture of us meditating together, then he mimed what I can only guess was meant to be an impression of me. It brought you running, so it must have been pretty good.”

Grogu beeped a happy baby-like squeal that sounded so very far at odds with the more sophisticated messages he’d just been sending her moments ago.

Her companion was silent for several moments before he sighed, probably in relief. Din took a seat next to them, picked the child up, and settled him on a knee.

“What about your food?”

“I finished eating.” His helmet turned, and Sarah guessed where he was looking before he even spoke. “You haven’t.”

“Grogu insisted.”

The helmet lifted and stared silently at her, until she finally gave in and reached over to dutifully pick the tray up. She snarfed the rest of the food down in unlady-like gulps, shoveling it into her mouth. In a few moments she was done, having left only a few cubes of meat in case Grogu was still hungry. Her precaution served well, as he eagerly accepted one.

“So what exactly is it he wants us to do?” Din asked when she had finished.

“Beyond meditation, I have absolutely no idea.”

They both looked down at the raspberry noise the child made, and Sarah sighed.

“It’s not my fault I don’t know your language,” she reminded him.

“He speaks?”

“I’m not entirely sure if it’s him speaking or if he’s sharing a memory of someone else talking, but I think it’s him. It’s… Well. It’s definitely unique.”

“Think you can help me keep her safe, bud?” Din asked as he lifted a finger to pet one of the child’s soft ears. Grogu stopped eating to turn his head to look up at him, silent and soulful. “I think that’s a yes.”

“You don’t think the thing about the prophecy was real, do you?” Sarah asked quietly, keeping her attention on Grogu instead of meeting the Mandalorian’s gaze as he turned to her.

“I think the Tuskens certainly do.”

“I care more about what you think of it.”

Din was silent for several moments, focus returned to the child in his lap before he shrugged.

“Might be, might not be. Either way, I think it gave us useful information. We’ve met someone who knew about your and the kid’s powers; that tells me there’s likely to be others out there, hopefully at least one of which is going to be willing to help us. It also tells me that there’s going to be some who recognize you and the kid are more than you appear to be. They knew about it without you saying or doing anything to give it away.”

“I… Think it was mutual,” Sarah began carefully as she frowned. “It was faint, but I felt something from the tribe’s leader and the medicine woman. I think it’s because they’re not as strong with the Force as the kid is.”

“Or as you are,” he added. It jogged something in Sarah’s memory, and deepened the frown on her face.

“The man in my dream offered to train me. He went from treating me as inconsequential to suddenly wanting my cooperation and partnership. I could feel his yearning.” She shuddered at the unpleasant memory.

“That’s a bad idea.”

“I _know,”_ she sighed. “But it gave me the impression he thinks I could do… More. Coming from someone that can reach into my dreams from however far away he is, I think that’s saying something.”

“Promise me you won’t let him teach you anything. Whatever it is, it can’t be good.”

Sarah smiled, but it was a dark thing, grim and determined.

“Oh, he’s teaching me plenty, and he’s not going to like when he realizes that.”

“Like what?” the Mandalorian asked sharply.

The longer they conversed, the more details Sarah was beginning to remember of her most recent dream misadventure. She suspected it was because she’d been aware of what was happening unlike the first time.

“I’m pretty sure what he does in the dream is a reflection of his own capabilities. I might be wrong, but I don’t think so. I know he can move things without touching them, but he also never used it on me personally, so maybe force attacks don’t work? That, or he just liked getting physical.”

She chose to ignore the way the Mandalorian beside her sat stiff and straight, and the roll of hot anger she could sense building in the air around him. Grogu however, didn’t. He squeaked and scrunched his head down into his robe as far as he could, and Din forcibly relaxed his posture.

“I’m not angry with you, kid. What did he do to you?” he asked roughly, and turned to look back at her while Grogu slowly peeped back out at them.

Sarah reached up to touch her throat and stopped at the last second, not wanting to disturb the salve that had been slathered over it.

“You already know.”

“I’ll teach you how to fight.”

“I’d like that.”

“No, you won’t, but you’ll need it.”

“Just promise not to actually break me in half,” she joked.

“I won’t.” His answer was so serious it had Sarah doing a double-take.

“... _Could_ you?” she wondered aloud.

She thought he had to be messing with her when he didn’t reply, just scooped Grogu up and pushed the child into her arms, then stood and walked back towards the cockpit.

“Take care of yourself and the kid, then we’ll start training.”

“Already?” she asked, taken aback. All she wanted to do was get some actual rest. She hadn’t thought they’d be doing anything active until much later in the day. “I barely got any sleep last night, and you know why.”

“We start in an hour. Hurry up.”

“Augh. Alright.”

“Make sure he doesn’t actually break me, alright, kid?” Sarah teased as she looked down at the child. He tilted his head at her as if confused, and she smiled. “I’m kidding. I know he wouldn’t hurt me.”

An hour and a half later, and Sarah was re-thinking her notions of their Mandalorian protector. She had expected the training to be rough, but she wasn’t prepared for just how brutal it would be as she was repeatedly thrown onto her back, her stomach, her side, her dignity for good measure, tossed over his shoulder, punched in the gut, or winded from her feet being knocked out from under her. Tatooine’s dazzling blue sky mocked her each time with its bright, cheery color. She was certain that Din Djarin _excelled_ at taking her pride as if it were a physical thing to smack around.

She was wearing a second change of clothes, a pair of loose leggings and a short tunic that fit her more closely than the one she had taken to normally wearing. She’d tightened it up to help keep sand out by wrapping her cowl around her waist as a sort of sash, and paid for it by finding out how useful it could be to an opponent as a convenient handhold to toss her around.

Laying flat on her back with the wind knocked out of her, _again,_ Sarah reconsidered recent life choices.

“You were right,” she declared in a dry wheeze. “I definitely hate this.”

“Get up, we’re not done.”

“It is definitely unfair to be asked to fight an opponent wearing _full metal armor,”_ she groaned, but obediently got back up to her feet to face him. She was supposed to prevent him from keeping hold on her, a task she was fairly certain was impossible. She’d been expressly forbidden from using any of her Force talents, and that in and of itself was proving a difficult challenge for her. Sometimes it was such a knee-jerk reaction she didn’t realize she was doing it, and she found a deep irony in the fact the Mandalorian had become quite adept at knowing just when she was. It seemed that their explorations of telepathy had helped him better understand how to sense her influence. Something she intended to learn more about later.

The first time it’d happened, she found a cable cord wrapped around her ankle followed by a rough jerk that brought her crashing down to the ground. She had thought it came from _literally nowhere_ until she followed it up to his vambrace where it was clearly coming from an internal spool. If she used her mind tricks, he brought out his fancy equipment.

She _definitely_ hated this.

“Pay attention, you’re not focused,” he ordered harshly, and Sarah barely had time to react before she found herself face-first in the sands again, sputtering.

“I don’t think this is working. You’re way too strong.”

“So is the enemy. This will make you stronger.”

Grogu sat outside in the shade beneath the ship and watched them ‘practice,’ playing with one of his toys. He occasionally took a drink from the metal cup she’d set out for him.

“What would you do against an armored opponent if you had nothing?” she asked, then hauled herself up to her feet and spit the sand out of her mouth as she wiped it off her face. She was glad the Tusken ladies had done up her hair, because the secure braid, though frazzled, was doing a good job of keeping it out of her face.

“I would spend less time talking and more time focusing on finding a weak spot.”

“But I don’t actually want to hurt you,” she pointed out with a frown.

“You won’t.”

Sarah sighed, because he was right.

This time when he rushed her without warning, she managed to jump aside and pivot, and narrowly avoided an easy grab that would have very quickly ended with her back in the hot sand. She knew he was holding himself back, but even still she was faced with what felt like an unstoppable force of nature. The shiny metal of his armor glinted in the sun, and Sarah abruptly stepped back and dropped her hands.

“I know exactly what I would do if you were literally _anyone_ else,” she said grimly.

“What would you do?”

“Your helmet is the easiest weak spot if I don’t have a weapon to impale you with in the gaps of your armor. Your throat’s exposed and if the helmet came off, I’d have a shot at your eyes. It’s the only thing I’ve been able to think of. At the very least, I could punch you under the jaw or in the neck.”

He stood very still as he listened to her speak, then nodded.

“It’s not as easy to knock off as you think.”

“I don’t want to find out.”

“Better figure something else out, then,” he said, and then he was coming at her again.

What felt like several hours later but was really only five or ten minutes at most, Sarah finally refused to get up off the ground.

“I’m done. If we go any farther I’m not going to have the mental fortitude to set wards tonight.”

She was surprised when he offered her a hand up, and gratefully accepted it, wincing as her sore muscles protested.

“Go get something to drink and join me back outside. We’ll start the lighter work next. I’ll show you what you need to do for next time.”

“Couldn’t we have _led_ with that?” she asked, incredulous.

“That wouldn’t have given me a good understanding of what you already know.” He was entirely unphased by her indignation, and Sarah had to close her eyes and remember that in a few days’… weeks’… if she was being realistic, probably a few months’ time, she would be looking back on this and be appreciative of his methods. She could _grasp_ the logic, but it didn’t make her stung pride or bruised body feel any better about the excessive failure of right _now._

She collected the cup from Grogu after offering him a sip from it, then went inside the spaceship to drink the rest and refill the cup. As much as she really wanted to, she didn’t sit down or dawdle, and came right back outside with a fresh cup of water which she offered to Din Djarin. He hesitated, then accepted it and tipped his helmet up. She’d since learned he didn’t actually lift it totally up his face to expose his mouth, but rather tilted it forward and away to allow enough of a gap he could sneak the cup’s rim halfway under.

She watched him with open curiosity. There was something distinctly domestic about seeing him do normal, human things that made him feel like less of a mysterious metal enigma.

When he was finished, he tossed the cup back at her and she nearly fumbled it.

“I’ll refill it for Grogu,” she announced, and in short order was back in front of him.

This time, the training was _much_ easier. Mostly because he was no longer showing her all the ways she could be beat up on, and instead walking her through stances and giving helpful advice on how she could avoid being grappled in the first place. She’d ditched the scarf-turned-sash even though it meant she often got sand inside her clothes from the shirt riding up, and she couldn’t wait for the luxury of a cold shower.

When he asked her to throw him down, Sarah looked at him dumbfounded.

“You must weigh at _least_ a couple hundred pounds. There’s no way I’m moving you. The most I can deadlift right now is like seventy, _maybe_ eighty.”

“You use your opponent's momentum against them. Even the smallest fighter can throw the larger down if they know what to do.”

Skeptical but willing, she let him walk her through the steps. Then, he rushed her.

Sarah threw her shoulder down and grappled him, and tried to work with the movement as his arms locked around her. She did not succeed, but she did manage to pull him off balance onto one leg, and threw her weight into him in the hopes she’d knock him off his foot.

It sort of worked, but only because he turned the move against her by bringing her down with him, and in short order she was pinned in the sand with a very heavy Mandalorian crushing all her illusions of martial prowess. There’d been a time when she thought she knew something about fighting, after being taught some moves of self-defense.

That time felt like so long ago.

“Move quicker next time, and don’t let me take you down with me.”

“Alright,” she wheezed. “Get off. You’re heavy.”

He eased off and offered a hand up, which she accepted.

This time she had better luck, but just as Sarah was about to whoop in triumph at successfully rolling the Mandalorian over her very sore shoulder and heard him thud heavily on the ground, she realized it’d been a little _too_ easy.

In the next instant she was laying flat on her stomach with her arms pinned behind her back, his weight digging into the muscles of her thighs to prevent her from kicking out and getting leverage.

“Right. Just because they’re down doesn’t mean they’re out,” she groaned, her voice muffled by the press of sand she was struggling not to let her face rest in.

“You need to pay attention to your footing, and keep moving. A static target is an easy target. Your legs are an easy opening.”

“At this point I am convinced my everything is an easy opening except my mind.”

“You’re not wrong, but it won’t stay that way.”

She gratefully gasped in mouthfuls of air after he got off of her, and pushed herself up onto her forearms. She blew at a loose strand of hair that fell in front of her eyes, and glowered at the ship’s stretching shadow. It was still very early in the morning, and she had a sinking feeling he didn’t plan on stopping until the sun was at, or nearly at, its zenith.

“Again?” she asked warily.

“Again,” he confirmed.

~*~

It had been many years since Din Djarin had worked with teaching someone to fight, not since he was stationed in the training ranks of the fighting core. Sarah proved to be a worthy student, obeying his instructions and putting her best foot forward even when he purposefully made the challenge he posed for her an impossible feat.

The coming weeks would determine if she was able to keep hold of that resolve and grow stronger, or if she would break under the pressure. He had no plans to go easy on her. She was badly out of shape for what a fighter should be, but he had no doubts that she could build her muscle and stamina up to become a formidable opponent. 

Their enemies wouldn’t give her any quarter, and he needed to prepare her for that.

She had a higher tolerance for pain than he was expecting from someone who seemed to have lived a fairly sheltered life up until recent, and he was careful to watch her body language to be sure he did not injure her. Bruises, stung pride, and sore muscles were par for the course, but he did not want her to pull a tendon, rip a muscle, or otherwise damage her body in a lasting way. He suspected that she might not tell him if he did.

With her trapped beneath him in the sand yet again, he contemplated ways to build her strength outside of these sparring practices. He could work something out for weights, and having her climb the ship and learn its parts would be useful double-fold. By learning about the Razor Crest she’d be able to help him make repairs when the inevitable times for them came up, and the activity would force her to hone her climbing abilities and give a full body workout isolated exercises simply couldn’t match.

“Are you going to get off or what?” Sarah asked as she turned her face in the sand to look at him out of the corner of one bright, furious eye. She couldn’t see it, but he was smirking.

“I’ve barely got you pinned. Use your leverage and _make_ me get off.”

“Have we not already established the fact you weigh a _ton?”_ she complained. Implacable, he remained imobile and waited to see what she’d do.

She tugged experimentally on her arms, but his grip didn’t give. She wriggled her hips, and he squeezed his knees to trap her in place.

Sarah huffed in frustration, then began all-out thrashing until she finally managed to break one of her arms free by twisting and squirming her wrist. Her sweaty skin made it easier for her to slip free of his leather-gloved hold.

Before he could grab the freed arm, she grabbed a handful of sand and threw it back at him, entirely futile in this situation as it bounced harmlessly off his visor, and he felt her boot kick him in the back. It sounded a dull _thud_ against his backplate.

“I hate your armor _so_ much right now,” she snarled.

“Use your legs. Leverage yourself up. I might be heavy, but you aren’t helpless here. This isn’t a proper grapple.” Really, he was effectively just sitting on her. It was almost amusing, and he tactfully chose not to inform his student that he wasn’t letting his full weight settle on her. If he did, she’d have no hope of breaking free.

Her fighting prowess was soon to be the difference between life and death for not only herself but the child they protected, and possibly himself as well.

At first he thought she’d given up when she went rag-doll limp beneath him with a bone-weary sigh, but then she burst into motion, struggling with all her might to force herself up off the ground, and used her legs to dig her knees into the sand. He knew the substrate made for a difficult footing, and it was a disadvantage they both shared, him more-so than her at the moment. She finally threw her hips to the side to knock his knee out, his weight driving him to sink further into the loose sand and lose his balance, and then she was squirming free. He let her, and Sarah rolled away and jumped up to her feet then scrambled back, chest heaving and face flushed from exertion.

She might be hating this, but Din Djarin was enjoying it. This was his element, and it felt undeniably good to have the upper-hand again after being put through the ringer under her own lessons. Payback was sweet.

They made a good team, building on each other’s skills, shoring up the other’s weaknesses. He figured if she were allowed to use the Force against him she’d be doing much better in the hand-to-hand, but that would defeat the purpose of what he meant to teach her. It wasn’t a guarantee her ability would always be effective against an opponent, or that she’d always be in a position to use it, and he wanted to curb her dependency on it. It was important that any warrior hone _all_ their skillsets individually, as well as be able to combine them for a well-rounded range of capability.

But for now, it was time to call a break. The sun was nearly at its zenith, and he’d alternated between working her hard and walking her through slow movements of different stances, so she could memorize the way her body worked and how it was supposed to feel.

He tried not to think of how much he was enjoying this hands-on approach to working with her.

“We’re done for the day. Get something to drink.”

Her temper cooled instantly like a switch had been flipped, and she was all smiles and bright eyes again as she trotted over to where Grogu sat playing underneath the belly of the Razor Crest. He took time to dust himself off of the worst of the sand that had stuck to his uniform, but he’d need time to clean out what had wedged itself between his armor plates and spilled into his clothes. He hated sand. It always got _everywhere._

He walked a full circuit around the ship to scout the near and distant area, turning on the lifeform detection sensors in his visor’s built-in display for good measure. Nothing except the expected desert wildlife nearby, small lizards and some slightly larger prey animals.

Satisfied, he entered the ship and found Sarah stretched out on the middle of the floor. Grogu sat up by her head to play with her frizzy hair. She hadn’t gone straight to wash up as he’d expected, but she certainly looked like she was enjoying the cool metal.

“You look comfortable,” he commented as he passed. His lips twitched with a smile at her beleaguered groan. A quick tap of a button and the door sealed shut behind him, locking out the desert’s heat. The room immediately dropped a few degrees in temperature, a welcome relief.

He sat down on the crate farthest away from her, and quietly began to divest himself of armor. He’d considered asking her to remove herself to the cockpit while he took care of his equipment, but if this was something he was willing to do in front of other Mandalorians, he didn’t feel right excluding her, a direct member of his clan, from that extension of trust.

Besides, there were benefits to having someone trustworthy around. This was his most vulnerable moment, and it always left him on edge. It was good to have someone he knew would watch his back.

It didn’t take her long to notice, and he caught her quick double-take. Shortly after, she had rolled onto her stomach to watch with open interest, propped up on folded arms. Grogu turned around to see what had caught his nanny’s attention, and happily burbled at him before turning back to try and gain Sarah’s undivided attention. The kid had seen this before, several times over on their long journey.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter six is currently under revision, and I've gotten another entirely new chapter written ;D A productive few days!


	6. Trickery

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I don't like sand. It's coarse, and rough, and irritating, and it gets -everywhere.-
> 
> I'd continue the quote to say that it's not like here in this chapter, but that's totally wrong. Din and Sarah definitely aren't big fans of the desert!

Sarah wasn’t sure what to think. It made sense, she knew, because gear needed maintenance. If she had sand in all the wrong, itchy, uncomfortable places, she couldn’t imagine what kind of discomfort it was causing someone in full plate and heavy layers. It was still so strange to see him lay his armor out on the floor - minus the helmet, of course - after she had become so accustomed to never seeing him without. The importance of this wasn’t lost on her, and she was touched by the trust he showed. From anyone else it may not have been a big deal, but for someone whose armor was literally a second skin to them, she figured it had to mean a lot.

“I thought you’d look smaller without it,” she commented. The helmet turned towards her briefly, before he returned his attention to pulling his boots off and shaking the sand out of them. “Got a broom somewhere? I’ll sweep it all up when you’re done.”

“In the supply room up top. Don’t track sand up there,” he warned, and Sarah smiled.

“Sand is contagious. It’s already up there just because you  _ thought  _ about it being up there. Sand gets  _ everywhere. _ ”

He scoffed, and her smile widened.

“That’s an understatement,” he said, and watched as his second boot dumped a healthy dose of sand out onto the floor. Sarah raised her eyebrows at the small pile it made.

“No kidding,” she agreed.

“Guard the armor. I’ve got first shower,” he ordered brusquely as he stood. “And don’t let the kid touch anything.”

Sarah’s eyes widened before she sat up and smoothed her tunic, and nodded.

“Alright,” she promised, then left Grogu to go and fetch her gun harness out of her effective locker. She didn’t need to be told he meant his command literally. She caught Din Djarin watching her from the end of the hall as she collected the child, then took a seat where he had been. With a short nod, he vanished into the other room.

It didn’t take him overly long to return, and Sarah quickly scooted out of the way so he could have his spot back. He didn’t come over immediately, and instead stopped by a pair of twin doors that opened at some unseen command. She raised her brows as she took in the impressive display of a cabinet literally choked full of weaponry of all sizes and shapes, all neatly arranged and displayed. From the bottom off the floor,. he picked up a small box and a handful of ratty work rags, then came and sat down on the floor with his back to the crate.

It was strange seeing him in only the cloth underlayers of his ensemble. She could tell there were several layers to it, and had to admit he wore it well. Broad shoulders and a well proportioned build, she hoped he didn’t think anything of her staring.

They sat in companionable silence as he worked on cleaning and polishing the metal. Sarah leaned forward to get a better look, and hoped she wasn’t being intrusive.

“Can I ask what it’s made out of? It doesn’t look like it’s even been scratched. It’s still so smooth,” she observed, fascinated.

“Beskar, Mandalorian steel. It’s what our ancestors have used since before the first songs were sung.”

“Do you sing?” she asked, and wondered if this would be a new hidden talent to add to the growing list.

“No.”

“Bummer.”

“Do you?” he returned, as he dug sand out of the creases of his breastplate with a bristle brush.

“Not in front of anyone.”

“Can’t keep a tune?” he joked, then set the front plating down and moved on to the next piece. When the sand and grit were purged, he moved on to wiping the lot of it down to remove any lingering trace of grime. Every movement was so well practiced and natural, that she wondered how long he’d made this a core part of his life. Forever, probably.

“I can, I just don’t like to sing in front of others.”

“What about the kid? He might like a lullaby.”

Sarah was surprised at the suggestion, then pursed her lips in thought. She looked down at Grogu who was comfortably settled down in her lap, trustingly leaned back against her stomach as he watched Din Djarin work and listened to them talk.

“He might,” she allowed, then changed topics. “I’m going to need to keep myself armed all the time like you do, aren’t I?” she questioned.

The helmet turned to look at her, then swun back to his work.

“That’d be wise. You’re less likely to be caught unprepared.”

“It’s strange to bring it into my private life. I’m used to going out armed during my travels as a precaution, but not while in my own home. That was always time to hang the belt up and relax.” She gestured around the ship for emphasis.

“You put a target on your head the moment you got involved with us. Nowhere is safe.”

“I don’t regret it,” she said, and looked away from him to meet Grogu’s gaze as she smiled softly. “Not at all.”

They fell back into a comfortable silence for a time, until the Mandalorian began the process of strapping on the plates of armor and Sarah couldn’t take her curiosity any longer.

“...Could I see a piece?” she asked tentatively, not sure how her request would be received.

He stopped and simply looked at her, halfway through securing the vambraces to his wrists. When she couldn’t take his silent stare any longer, worried that she’d upset him, Sarah opened her mouth to apologize. He cut her off by reaching up to his right shoulder and removing the pauldron. She wasn’t sure what technology held the armor plating attached to its anchor, but she felt a thrill of excitement as the cool metal was placed into her hands.

Grogu squeaked and reached out for it, and Sarah sent a glance to Din Djarin to see his reaction as she carefully held it out of the child’s reach.

“He can look,” he said gruffly.

So she pulled it closer and settled the shockingly light piece of metal on her lap, still cradled carefully in her hands. Grogu put his hands on its curve, until he had satisfied his curiosity and returned to leaning back against her with a yawn. He was due for another nap soon.

“It’s so light for how thick it looks. I thought it’d be heavier,” she murmured. 

“It’s been worked to be lighter than its natural state,” he explained. “This is Beskar, too,” he added, and reached up to tap the dark T of his visor’s view. “It can take many forms.” Surprised and impressed to learn just how versatile the material was, Sarah turned back to examining it with a newfound respect.

“What’s this symbol mean?” she asked as she brushed light fingertips over the stylized skull. Whatever creature it was, it had an elongated head with a large, sweeping horn on the nose that curved up and over it. She marveled over the perfect quality of the craftsmanship, and turned the pauldron over to inspect its underside. Smooth metal met her fingertips.

“It’s a Mudhorn’s skull. Our clan signet, given to me by the Forgemaster of the covert I grew up in. The kid and I earned it not long before we met you.”

“Thank you,” she breathed, and offered it back to him as he finished pulling on the final piece of armor that had been arrayed around him. He took it and pressed it down onto the cradle over his shoulder, and she listened curiously to the soft, hissing  _ click _ it made as it settled into place.

“Add this to your clan duties. We guard each other when we must remove our armor, and are at our most vulnerable. Thank you,” he added softly.

“Of course. You know, I bet I could anchor more permanent wards for you in the metal, if you wanted,” Sarah mused, her gaze losing focus as she thought of the possibilities. Everything had a resonance to it, almost like a kind of song that was felt rather than heard. She’d come to assume her notice of it had to do with her ability to wield the Force, and made extensive use of it with the crystals that aided her works.

She blinked when she realized he hadn’t answered her yet, and turned to find him looking at her, doing his silent-helmet-stare-thing which meant he was probably either making faces at her or thinking about something. Possibly both.

“No,” he said after a time. “Only the Mandalorian smiths work with Beskar.”

“Do you think I’ll ever meet one?”

“Perhaps.”

“Ready to watch Grogu so I can go shower?”

He held his hands out for the child, and Sarah passed him over. She stood and stretched, and stopped only to rummage in her trunk for a fresh change of clothes. She lifted her baggy tunic up and sniffed discreetly, nose wrinkled at the strong smell of sweat and dust.

“Laundry time,” she muttered, then snatched up the green dress instead.

Cool water felt absolutely heavenly, and she took especial care to rinse all the sand out of her hair. She wasn’t worried about wasting water anymore as she now knew that the Razor Crest had an efficient closed-unit recycling system, and the only thing they had to be especially careful with was the actual drinking supply, which was currently well stocked.

A heavy fist banged on the shower door in three short, sharp raps that made her jump and look over. She threw her arms over her chest on reflex, just in case he intended to barge in.

“We’ve got company inbound, I need you to watch the kid,” Din Djarin called through the metal, then his footsteps hurried away.

Sarah shut the water off and jumped out, smacking her fist to the button to halt the dry cycle as the fans  _ whoosed _ to life automatically. She threw the dress over herself since it was faster to yank it on than trying to get leggings on over wet skin even if they were the more practical choice if a fight was coming, snatched up her harness, and rushed out with her hair dripping wet and water droplets trailing behind her on the cold floor. She buckled up and loosened her blaster in its holster as she went. Grogu looked at her from her bed where Din had left him, and Sarah shoved her feet into her boots with a grimace at the feel of wet feet against the inner lining.

“C’mere, kiddo.” She reached down and scooped him up, then looked up when her partner dropped back into the lower room from the cockpit with a thud, haste in his steps.

“Stay inside the ship,” he ordered, and he was outside before she could even ask what was going on. The door shut behind him.

Sarah remained standing, and resisted the temptation to go up to the cockpit to try and see outside. They were better served staying out of sight, so she turned her attention instead to strengthening the wards she had already woven around herself and Grogu to keep them hidden from notice. It felt like a warm shimmer against her skin, an invisible touch of energy that lingered at the edges of her awareness.

She heard the sound of engines outside, too quiet to be a spaceship and too shrill to be something large, so she guessed it was probably speeders of some sort. When blasterfire didn’t sound from outside, she figured the meeting was probably - hopefully - a friendly one.

Still, she waited in tense silence, and kept her aura close as she resisted the urge to pace and cause an echo of footsteps. Grogu seemed to realize the gravity of the situation as he always did - he kept quiet, obediently tucked into the crook of her arm and broking no complaint over the damp cloth spoiling his own robes. There’d be time to fix that later.

When the door of the Razor Crest hissed open, Sarah raised her free hand and half-drew her pistol free, and relaxed slightly as Din Djarin entered. He turned to gesture for someone out of sight to halt.

“I’ll bring it out. Wait there.”

He didn’t look her way even when he stepped out of sight of the doorway, and Sarah kept her mouth shut. He was carrying a canteen, which he stopped to fill.

“Please, sir. My wife needs to get out of the heat. We’re hours away from the nearest town. Even just for a few minutes, please.”

He turned to look back at the entryway, silent for several moments before he gestured at her with a shooing motion. At first Sarah wasn’t sure what he wanted, then she turned and hit the controls to open up the sleeping chamber he and Grogu shared. She crawled inside and it shut soundly behind her.

_ “Shhh,” _ she murmured in a soft breath when the child started to stir, probably wondering what was going on. She touched his head and reached out with her mind, willing him to feel the soothing reassurance she focused on radiating for his benefit. It was brief, but it seemed to do the trick. She had no time to marvel at the cleverness of applying their telepathy to benefit her nannying skills, and instead strained to hear what was happening outside. There were footsteps in the ship and muffled voices. All she could tell was that there was more than one person on board. Two visitors at least, she assumed.

“Do you know where you’re headed?” she heard Din ask. His voice was much closer, and she had to guess he’d moved to stand between them and the newcomers. The familiar grind of gears and the hissing noise of the Razor Crest’s door had an eerie finality to it as she heard it latch shut.

“North, to Los Islie.”

A brief silence, then Din Djarin spoke again.

“You’re going the wrong way for that. There’s nothing North of here for several days worth of travel. What map are you using?”

“Are you saying we’ve been going the wrong way this whole time?” a woman’s high-pitched soprano exclaimed. There was a wan quality to her voice Sarah cringed in sympathy to hear.

“We bought this map puck off a trader! I spent good credits on that.”

“Then you got played. This map isn’t just out of date, it’s not even to scale.” 

“Can you give us directions?” the woman begged.

“No, no, I’m tired of being sent off without certainty. We’ll hire you to take us to town. I’ll give you everything I have, please, we’re desperate.”

“Karo! We can’t spend everything, what will we do for food?”

“We’ll it’s not going to do us any good to have a pocket of credits we can’t eat or drink when we’re lost in the middle of the dunes dying of thirst!” the man snapped.

“I wasn’t planning on going into town. I can give you directions, but that’s all.”

“Please, sir, you must reconsider. I beg of you. I’ll - I’ll sell my speeder, it’s a new model, it’ll fetch a good price, several thousand at least. We’ll make it worth your time.”

Sarah bit her lip. Under different circumstances she’d be all for helping the couple out to the highest extent of their capabilities, but she didn’t like the idea of bringing Grogu so close to a populated area.

It had not taken her long to become paranoid, Sarah reflected, but she figured it was an understandable thing considering their circumstances.

She heard Din Djarin’s heavy sigh even through the metal door.

“Show me what you have.”

There was a distant rustle of cloth and a soft clinking sound.

“Alright. Load the speeders on, I’m not wasting the fuel to idle overhead.”

“Thank you, sir, thank you!”

She heard the commotion of the people leaving. Footsteps approached, and when the door opened Sarah shoved her pistol all the way back into its holster, and clipped its securing strap back into place. Din Djarin was watching her, and even without being able to see his face she could tell he was moody. Something in the way his shoulders slumped, head scrunched back.

“Up to the cockpit?” she guessed hopefully. She couldn’t wait to get out of the confined space - the walls closed in around her, and every time she’d been in this room, it’d been chased with the fear of uncertainty and a need to hide.

“Yes. I’ll have them stay down here. It won’t be a long flight.”

“How much did they pay you to play shuttle transport?” she asked as she scooted out.

“Enough.”

“Does Los Islie have any merchants that might sell rocks? Might be able to find the crystals I need for ward stones while we’re there, since we’re going anyways.”

“Probably not, but we can look. You are soaking wet,” he observed, and looked past her to see the puddle of water that had soaked onto his sleeping pallet’s thin cushion.

“Of course I am. I wasn’t going to take the time to dry off when you came banging on the door. I’ll take care of the mess later,” she promised, and fetched Grogu’s carrying bag. She tucked him in, then slung a strap over her shoulder to awkwardly climb the ladder rungs. She could hear Din Djarin set about opening the back hatch to allow the speeders to be loaded up. Not long after she’d found her seat, an unpleasant sounding  _ clang _ resounded from below that was probably one of them bumping into a wall. It was followed by a quick reprimand from the Mandalorian.

“Stay down here and don’t touch anything,” was the only other thing she heard him say. He joined her shortly after.

She didn’t speak, but she did look up to meet his brief glance. He stopped once to reach out and offer Grogu his hand, and watched as the child gripped a thick finger in his tiny palm.

Then he turned away and took his seat in the pilot’s chair, and in silence managed the controls to bring them into flight. Sarah was content to sit back and watch, idly listening to the soft noises from below. She couldn’t make out their hushed conversation, but she had gathered that there was at least one other person on board.

They’d been traveling for maybe fifteen minutes when Sarah heard footsteps approaching.

“Uh, excuse me, sir?” the husband called from below. Din Djarin turned in the seat to look behind.

“What?”

“Can we fill my son’s water canteen?”

“Don’t waste any of it.”

“Of course, thank you.”

The footsteps receded, and Sarah felt herself relax back into her seat as her companion faced forward again. The rest of the flight was silent.

She stayed in the cockpit, and valiantly resisted the urge to swivel back-and-forth in her seat. Grogu made soft, quiet squeaks now and then that were barely louder than a whisper. He’d fallen asleep halfway to the port, and now she waited for their passengers to be done unloading. She was halfway miserable in her still-damp clothes, and eagerly hoped Din Djarin would deem it safe enough for her to accompany him into town. As much as she didn’t like the idea of being seen, she liked the idea of being left alone on the ship even less, and was hopeful she could use the planet’s arid climate to dry herself off. She tugged at her skirt to stop it from clinging, and ignored the itch of sand grains caught between the fabric and her skin that had somehow escaped her shower purge.

“Alright. They’re out.”

“Are we coming with you?” she asked after she’d climbed down the ladderway. He stared at her, and she waited patiently for his answer.

“Yes. Stay close.”

Sarah smiled and walked past him to fetch her Tusken scarf, and set the sleeping Grogu down while she wrapped it around her shoulders and pulled it up over her hair, which was probably an unruly mess from partially drying without being combed. It covered the healing bruises on her neck - she’d examined them during her shower with a tiny mirror, and had been relieved to find that it wasn’t that bad. Definitely not as horrible as she was sure the first incident had been. Just… alarming.

She strapped the child she was quickly coming to think of as hers to her chest, then adjusted her scarf to cover his head from the harsh sun, and to hide him from the view of curious onlookers.

Din Djarin led the way in silence, and Sarah sighed in relief as the dry heat washed over them.

“Well look who’s back,” a woman announced in a harsh, shrill voice. “Glad to see you’re still in one piece, and the ship, too! Don’t need repairs this time I take it? How’s the little one doing?” The talkative stranger was a tall, thin woman dressed in mechanic’s scrubs with an impressive amount of fluff to her wild, curly hair. Sarah backpedaled and quickly stepped behind Din Djarin when the mechanic would have reached right for the child she carried. “Oh! Well now that’s a bit rude, don’t’cha think?”

“It’s alright,” he assured her as he turned to look over a shoulder. “She’s watched him before.”

“Ah.” Sarah took a deep breath and stepped back into view, and after a moment’s hesitation, lifted the cowl so the woman could see Grogu. He was now fully alert and awake, and peered up at the woman with his wide, dark eyes.

“Gosh, you two are the most paranoid parents I’ve met this side of the galaxy. I wouldn’t hurt a hair on the little tyke’s head. I offered to buy it off of him, you know, he’d have been real well taken care of here. Isn’t that right, knucklehead?” she asked, her gazed dropped down at a saucer-headed, thin-limbed droid who had hobbled and bounced over to them carrying a toolbox. “No, no, you don’t need that. There’s nothing to do on the ship this time except fuel it up, he actually brought the thing down in one piece. Go on, get. You  _ do _ need fuel, right?”

“Yes. We’re going into town; do you know if anyone around here sells crystals, stones, things like that?” Din asked, calmly interrupting the woman’s chatter. Sarah watched as he handed the woman a few credit blocks to pay for the fuel.

The mechanic looked up to him and placed her hands on her hips after counting out and pocketing the money, and gave a sassy headshake as she answered him.

“Do I know  _ if? _ What do I look like, a walking kiosk-droid? Of course I know,” she continued, utterly baffling Sarah. “You get on the main road and take a left, and not three blocks down there’s a guy selling a whole bunch of junk rocks and some better crystals. Good for some of the finer engineering work I hear, but his prices are a crime against the solar system, and he carries a limited stock.”

“Thanks. Keep an eye on the ship, we won’t be long.”

“Aww, aren’t you going to leave the little guy with me again? It’s been  _ ages _ since you stopped by.”

“Not this time.”

“Yeah, well, make sure I get to say goodbye before you go slinking off to wherever it is you go. You’re awfully quiet, girl. You got a name? Do you even talk?”

“No, I’m mute,” Sarah answered. It earned her a laugh, and she finally felt the tension leave her shoulders enough to smile. “Sarah,” she offered, and extended a hand. The woman shook it in a firm grip, three too many times.

“Well, Sarah, it’s nice to see he’s keeping some good company around. I was a little worried about the little guy getting enough attention. Did you know the first time I met him, he left the kid all alone on board? For  _ hours! _ Little tyke came waddling out all hungry and mopey. Just about broke my heart.”

Sarah slowly turned to look at Din Djarin with a raised eyebrow, who offered no comment. Grogu burbled a tiny noise she fancied was an accusatory support to the woman’s story, and she carefully pulled the cloth back over his head. He grumbled at her, but let it happen.

“...I didn’t, no.”

“Well, you seem nice enough. Pretty, too! So are you his sister or something? No, who am I kidding, if you were you’d probably have one of those scary helmets on too. Wife? Cousin-twice-removed?”

“Clanmate,” Sarah said as Din sighed heavily.

“Oh? Well then, that’s nice. You don’t look like a Mandalorian though. Not nearly enough weapons on you.” The observation carried an implied request for more information, and Sarah wasn’t keen to indulge it.

“We need to get moving.” Without further adieu, Din Djarin walked away. Sarah rushed to follow.

“Oh! Well, come back soon! And I mean it, don’t leave without letting me say goodbye to the little one!”

“We’ll be back,” was the only promise he gave as he led the way into town.

Sarah had been in towns she didn’t consider ‘safe,’ but this had to be a new record. Exponentially. Everywhere she looked, she saw folks who made the hair on the back of her neck stand up on end, and she redoubled her focus on maintaining the suggestion to any who looked that they were nothing worth taking notice of, just a pair of travelers or maybe only a dusty breeze that stirred the air. It was worth it to let them walk down the road without drawing the attention she was sure they otherwise would.

She was relieved to see people’s gazes sliding over them, especially a particularly mean-looking vendor who hassled all the potential customers that walked past, trying to convince them to look at his wares. The drawback was that it also meant no one stepped out of their way.

It didn’t seem to phase Din Djarin, who simply charted a course around them. She let the illusion drop when they reached their destination, and sighed deeply at the release of tension that had pounded against her temples in increasingly painful throbs. They were still warded against the basics, and Sarah moodily contemplated the thought that she wouldn’t be able to keep up the illusion for their return back to the ship. She had almost forgotten just how exhausted she was from the brutal training and rough start to the too-early morning, but now that they’d been walking, her aches and sores were all returning to remind her just what she’d been through.

“Do you see what you need?” he asked as he looked around the crowded room. The store was dark and dirty, and cramped with floor-to-ceiling shelves loaded down with all varieties of ores, minerals, rocks, and crystals. Sarah felt unpleasantly tingly all over, and decided that she didn’t like this store and the way it felt. She could already tell that he wasn’t likely to have the Quartz - a common enough crystal, and useful to her, but all of the boxes she looked at boasted more exotic selections even if they were poor quality chunks.

“Ahhh, welcome, welcome, I didn’t hear you come in,” a deep, rumbling voice greeted them as a lumbering hulk of blue-gray flesh and bloodshot yellow eyes ambled into view. He was twice as tall as she was, Sarah was certain, and had absolutely no clue what his species was. Long, muscular arms were covered in a rough scaly skin which looked better suited to a damp environment in some swamp than Tatooine’s dry climate. He looked like something between a flat-headed fish and a toad-skinned ogre.

“I’m looking for focusing crystals, top grade. Do you carry them?” Sarah asked as she stepped forward. His unblinking gaze moved from Din to her.

“I carry only the finest selection in my vast collection. Come see, come see for yourself,” he urged and bobbed his oblong head to emphasize his words. He cast several glances over her towards her silent companion as they walked. Sarah noted that the vendor had little, shriveled whiskers that quivered in the air with every wheezing breath he took, and Sarah followed him as he led her through the narrow paths between the shelves. Din Djarin followed close behind.

Grogu squeaked and burbled curiously as he peeked out from under her cowl, and looked around at the array of crystals.

“Look here, these are a rare selection, you won’t find them anywhere else on the planet!”

Sarah stepped forward to investigate, unimpressed, and began to walk up and down the racks, taking note of what she saw. Some of the crystals and stones on display were unfamiliar to her, but all of them had their name and cut style noted on a small placard. She  _ did _ find a crate full of lumps of white, dingy looking quartz, and didn’t even have to pick them up to know none of them were the quality she needed.

“On this planet, perhaps, but I’ve seen half of these sold by the bucketful on Oma’r and Veshka. None of this is any use to me.” She frowned severely to let him see her displeasure.

“Ahh, a true collector, I see,” the merchant quickly replied, then grunted and rubbed his chin. “What specifically do you need? I assure you, I’ll have it.”

“What do you know of focusing crystals?” she asked with a sigh. She’d already told him what she needed. “I need something that can focus a strong energy source and refine its output. It has to be able to withstand the strain long-term.”

“How about a Prismatic Oka?” the vendor offered, and gave Sarah hope she might actually find something useful here. The more she saw of his ‘collection,’ the more she began to worry he didn’t actually know anything about what he was selling, or if he did, he knew he was selling junk.

The lumbering giant stepped around a corner to pull down a bucket of clear, dingy looking stones. Sarah had been excited when he said the name, but now that she saw what he had in stock, it fizzled out. She shook her head.

“I’m not paying for anything less than top grade. Let’s cut to the chase; I know my rocks, and you either don’t or you know exactly what you’re selling, and are hoping I’m stupid enough to buy it. Show me something worth my time, or I’ll take my business elsewhere. I don’t have to have the crystals today, and none of this junk meets my needs.”

The merchant blustered and grunted at her brusque demand, and Sarah waited patiently, and calmly held his gaze while the shopkeep’s bulbous cheeks filled with air, then deflated, several times over.

“These are  _ top _ grade--”

“They’re the leftovers from the main matrix, cracked and scratched and beat up worse than a retired astro-droid. If this is the best you have, I’m not interested. Let’s go,” she said, and turned away. Din Djarin silently fell into step beside her.

She made it three steps before the merchant cried out for her to wait. Sarah pivoted on her heel, and fixed him with a stern expression.

“Forgive me, forgive me. I can see you’re a higher class of customer than what frequents these parts. It’s rare to have someone who truly wants the best of the best, and knows what it is when they find it.” His gaze flickered to Din Djarin, and she caught the covetous look as the shopkeep gave a critical once-over of the Mandalorian’s armor. “I can’t just show my best wares to anyone, or I’d have the thieves squatting here by the dozens. You understand, yes? Come, come. I’ll show you something worth your while,” he rumbled.

She turned and followed after, offering no comment as he led the way into the back room. A flickering yellow light hung suspended in the dusty cellar, which was piled high with more of the low quality rocks she’d seen on the shelves out front. Before she could grow truly annoyed at being given the run-around, the merchant keyed open a hidden doorway that led to a dimly lit stairwell, and began to amble down it as he gestured for them to follow.

Sarah glanced around once before she entered, rather relieved to have the company of the imposing Mandalorian at her back as they descended an obscenely long flight of stairs that spiraled straight down into the ground. Though there wasn’t any obvious sign of it, she was absolutely certain there was some kind of security feature of a deadly sort built into the walls here.

There were far too many wire ports and otherwise nonsensical seams in the wall to make this an ordinary stairwell.

When they reached the bottom, they were met with a very high-quality looking blast door that the merchant keyed open, his bulk easily blocking the passcode entry from view. Sarah’s mood improved considerably as he led them inside this new chamber, a much cleaner space with bright lighting and low, wooden tables arranged with flat display trays. Individual crystals and lumps of precious metals were arranged on display, and some particularly spectacular looking specimens were framed in deep-set alcoves carved into the wall, secured behind transparent, flickering forcefields.

“This is more to your tastes, no?” the merchant asked proudly, and gestured to the room with a flourish.

“Better,” she conceded, the understatement of a century, but she didn’t need him to know how impressed she was or he’d drive a harder bargain than she suspected she was already in for. She walked along the rows and took her time to inspect the grades of stones, looking for something that not only looked like it would meet her needs but also  _ felt _ right. There wasn’t any particular method or checklist she could tick off. It was either what she needed, or it wasn’t.

Din Djarin had wandered from her side, and she glanced over to find him looking into each of the alcoves on the wall, where precious metals and rare gems were on display.

“Ah, a fine choice, a fine choice indeed,” the reptilian hulk rumbled as Sarah picked up a brilliant, opaque white crystal that reflected a rainbow of colors in its multifaceted depths.

She set it back down and moved on without comment, occasionally picking up a stone that caught her interest, or to see what kind of reaction the shopkeep gave. He looked calm and radiated a content sort of smugness she could sense even without reaching out to him with her mind, and she figured he was feeling very sure he would make a sizable sale. She thought maybe he would.

This was more than she’d been expecting to find, but Sarah was willing to spend a good chunk of her remaining funds for a tool she intended to use to help keep them safe.

“--I’ve never seen this kind of crystal before,” Sarah blurted before she could think better of it, and hoped she hadn’t damaged the reputation she’d pushed as a knowledgeable client. She _ was,  _ but she also wasn’t as well read or experienced as she’d like to be.

“My! That would be because it is very,  _ very _ rare in this day and age,” the merchant supplied, sounding quite pleased, which was a relief. He stepped up beside her and gestured at the tiny, glittering black crystal on display in an alcove. It was maybe as large as her thumb, all sharp edges and flat facets. “Few these days have even heard of the Terresta crystal; this may well be the only one of its kind this side of the galaxy. I can offer you a fair price indeed for such a fine prize, but it will be steep. Your friend’s armor, should he be willing to part with it, would cover a good portion of the cost.”

The Mandalorian turned his head and Sarah scoffed.

“If you know anything about his armor, then you should know what an insult that was to even suggest. I wouldn’t anger him, if I were you,” she added on a whim of inspiration, voice lowered. The merchant’s whiskers quivered, and she hid her amusement at seeing him shed a literal haze of nervous-driven spores from the back of his neck.

“Of course, of course. Other arrangements could be made…”

“What’s your price on this?” Sarah asked as she moved past the black crystal that had caught her eye, and stopped at a tray of slender, luminous ones. They were raw, processed only enough to remove the impurities of the stone they had likely been mined out of, and had a lovely resonance to them when she brushed her fingers over their glittering surfaces.

“The entire flat, or has one in particular caught your eye?”

“The price for the lot and the price for five.”

“Two thousand credits for the lot, I’ll do five for three hundred.”

_ ‘Ouch, steep,’ _ Sarah thought with an internal grimace.

“Two hundred for six and I’ll keep shopping,” she bartered, and paused at the next flat to pick up a particularly splendid looking gemstone she recognized as expensive.

She almost couldn’t believe her luck when the merchant huffed and chortled, and consented to the arrangement.

“This is Beskar.”

It was more the tone of his voice than what he actually said that made Sarah turn around to look at Din Djarin. There was a disquieting stillness about him as he stared into one of the alcoves, that Sarah found distinctly dangerous. The shopkeep didn’t seem to notice, and ambled over towards him. Sarah followed, and tried to think what had caused such a change in her companion’s demeanor.

“Ahhh, I am not surprised it caught your eye; only a Mandalorian and the best of collectors would recognize it in its natural state. It is not cheap,” he added, and the helmet slowly turned his way. “But for one such as yourself… I can cut you a fair deal.”

“How much?”

“Twenty three thousand credits, no less, and that’s a  _ very _ good price my friend.”

_ ‘Holy SHIT,’ _ Sarah thought as she stopped behind them to look at the fist-sized lump of bubbly ore. A  _ big _ fist-size, but still!

“Where did you get this?” Din Djarin asked.

“Oh, why, I bought that off a trader some time back. The poor fool didn’t know what he had,” the merchant said, chuckling. Sarah looked at him sharply. She didn’t think he was lying, but there was definitely more to it.

“Beskar belongs to the Mandalorians.”

“Well, for the price I named, it can be yours again! I cannot give up something for nothing, you understand.”

Sarah’s internal wariness spiked into alarm when she saw Din Djarin’s hand twitch towards the pistol at his hip. The merchant didn’t seem to notice, but she quickly stepped up between the two and leaned forward.

Taking a great chance, she let her hand brush against his and sent a whisper of thought his way, pretending to scrutinize the metal with a critical frown.

_ ‘How important is this to you?’ _ she asked without preamble, relieved that he let her in after only a moment of hesitation. Her headache from before began to return with the effort.

She could feel the deep-seated anger radiating from him in palpable waves.

_ ‘It belongs to us. The Beskar mines were pillaged by Imperials during the great Purge; this is stolen.’ _

She didn’t need him to explain any further in order to grasp the gist. His powerful yearning for it was almost alarming, except that it wasn’t driven by greed for an expensive ore but rather by the sentiment revolving around why  _ he _ found it priceless. It was more than just a useful material; It was at the heart and soul of his very culture.

Sarah withdrew and took a few moments to collect herself, and thought fast. They couldn’t afford that price, she was certain, or Din would likely have agreed to pay it or at least started haggling.

“Well, I certainly wouldn’t pay that much for something that’s fake,” she said skeptically, then huffed. “I’m surprised you’d keep something like that in a fine collection such as this.”

“Why--! That’s pure Beskar ore, you’ve probably never laid eyes on it in your life,” the seller protested as he looked at her, aghast. Sarah shrugged.

“Look who I’m traveling with. I’ve seen the real deal. Let’s see it, then. Do you even know how to tell real Beskar apart from its mimics?”

“Beskar doesn’t have a mimic metal,” the shopkeep protested uncertainly, and she could see him wavering, obvious in the way he shifted his feet and darted his glance between the two of them, his gaze lingering long on the Mandalorian armor.

Deciding it was best not to commit to anything more than implication, Sarah raised a brow at him.

“Your friend certainly believes its Beskar. A true Mandalorian would know.”

_ ‘Ach,’ _ she stewed internally.

“And what do you know of the Mandalorians?” she asked sweetly. “Know anything about their smiths?”

“They’re some of the finest metal workers in the galaxy.”

_ ‘So, not much,’ _ she surmised, and suspected the extent of his knowledge ranged around the metal’s hefty price tag. She was counting on that.

“And I’ve had the honor of studying their craft,” she explained, thinking of her brief time handling the pauldron. Studying their craft, indeed. “Lets see the ore. If it’s the real deal, I’ll buy it off you. If it’s not…” She shrugged. “Sell it to the next client who comes by, and don’t blame me when you get your throat slit if they find out its not what it seems.”

She could practically feel Din’s gaze burning into the back of her head. He remained silent, letting her work.

“The Mandalorians don’t let outsiders learn their ways,” the shopkeep gruffed, though he reached over to key the force field off.

“She’s a member of my clan,” Din supplied quietly. “She is not an outsider.”

“Well, then, where’s her shiny armor?”

Sarah held her hand out for the metal as the merchant fumbled with it, and rolled it back and forth between his large, meaty palms. He didn’t surrender it to her.

“I haven’t earned the right to wear it, only the honor to guard it. He’s a fully trained warrior - I specialize in the crafting side of things.”

“That so?” the merchant asked slowly, then looked sharply to the Mandalorian behind her. “You’d swear on your honor that the girl’s truly of your clan? Your ilk don’t break their word, this I know.”

“I do.”

The merchant grumbled, then dropped the lump of ore into her waiting hand. It was  _ much _ heavier than she expected, and it gave Sarah an idea.

“It’s too heavy, though it does have the right formation, see the whorls? Though that’s not exactly unique…” she mused aloud. “Got a tuning fork?”

“A tuning fork?” the merchant spluttered.

She fixed him with a pitying look.

“Yes, a tuning fork. All metal has a resonance, and each sounds different. I’m surprised you don’t know that.”

He drew his elongated lips back in a flat-toothed grimace, then turned and ambled over to the center table. From beneath it he withdrew a flat, slender box, while Sarah tried not to faint at the realization she was holding a lump of rare metal in her hands worth more credits than she’d seen in her entire lifetime, and valuable enough for other reasons that her usually level-headed companion was thinking borderline murderous thoughts.

“I do know,” the merchant rumbled belatedly as he set the case down. He opened it for her, and withdrew a long, slender tuning fork of pristine make and craft. Sarah carefully accepted it, then without ceremony rapped the tuning fork against Din Djarin’s pauldron, and listened carefully to the lovely, high note it produced. She waited to speak again until the sound had completely faded.

“If this is really the same Beskar, it will match in resonance.” She laced her words with a subtle thread of power, just a hint of suggestion, and sent a silent prayer up to whoever might be listening in on her trickery that they would sound distinctly different enough the merchant would buy it.

She held her palm perfectly flat, then lightly rapped the tuning fork against the largest of the shiny, silver bubbles the lumpy metal was formed of. It’s tone was dull and droning.

She practically  _ felt _ the merchant’s hope wither into dust. She almost felt bad for bamboozling him. Almost.

“That… It doesn’t…”

“I hope you didn’t pay much for it. You said the trader didn’t know what he had - are you sure you did?” she questioned.

“I put two thousand credits down on it, he thought it was Durasteel, but I had a good source tell me otherwise.”

Sarah pounced on the opening he gave her.

“If someone  _ else _ told you to buy it, that should have been your first clue.”

“What is it, then?” he asked gruffly.

Sarah pursed her lips and rolled the metal around in her palm.

“It’s not useless, there’s that at least. I wouldn’t be able to name its exact material without a lab study of the molecular structure, but it could be one of a range of lesser steels. Useful, just not as useful or rare as Beskar.”

She offered it back to him almost carelessly, as if it weren’t something to be treasured, and the merchant reluctantly accepted it from her.

“How many people have you boasted about it to?” she asked sympathetically. If someone bought a ‘fake’ specimen from him and found out about it, she had no doubt his reputation would be trashed, if not put his life at risk for that kind of money. He’d have to dispose of the ore and claim an anonymous buyer walked off with it.

She knew he wouldn’t actually have that problem with  _ this _ particular lump, but he didn’t need to know that.

“Enough,” he rumbled.

“Mm. Well. I'll tell you what. It’s worth at least three thousand credits, five at most if it’s lucky enough to be one of the rarer look-alikes. Throw in something else of your collection, and I’ll take it off your hands along with the crystals I picked out from before. Surprise me,” she offered, and pulled out her pouch. “Four thousand, eight hundred credits.”

She waited with baited breath, and casually rolled the bottom of the pouch over her fingers so he could hear the credits click.

His eyes watched the bag with a covetous gaze, greedy and desiring.

Without a word the giant turned and shuffled around the room, and collected six of the crystals she’d bartered for earlier and a few other items. Suspecting she was liable to be arrested for one hell of a robbery, Sarah put her everything into keeping a straight face and a relaxed posture. When the merchant returned, he let her watch as he dumped the goods into a leather pouch, followed lastly by the lump of Beskar ore.

Sarah counted out the credits under his watchful gaze and pretended she didn’t mind that she had just dumped almost the entirety of her life’s savings on a pile of rocks - albeit very expensive ones - and that she’d probably have one hell of a target on her head if the shopkeep ever discovered her subterfuge. He handed her back the empty sack, and pocketed the credits. Sarah and Din Djarin followed him back through the door and up the steps, and finally to the front entry.

“Very good doing business with you,” the shopkeep said with gruff cheer. “Come back again the next time you pass through. You will be remembered as welcome guests here,” he promised.

Sarah, about ready to faint from her ridiculous stunt and its unbelievable success, laced her words with a whisper of suggestion as she paused in the doorway.

“We’re both pretty forgettable people. I’m sure it won’t be long before you can’t even remember having met us,” she said, then turned and left the shopkeeper scratching at his head and looking around as if he couldn’t remember what he was doing at the front steps of his store.

They were silent all the way back to the ship’s hanger, and while they waited for the Razor Crest’s entrance ramp to extend and lower as it folded out, Din Djarin’s helmet turned to look down at her.

Sarah smiled.

He said nothing, only started up the ramp. She nearly jumped out of her skin when a harsh, shrill voice shouted from behind.

“HEY! You promised to let me see the little guy before you left!”

Sarah didn’t choose to correct the woman that they technically hadn’t, but she wasn’t surprised when the Mandalorian did. The mechanic huffed at them, hands on her hips where she stood at the end of the ramp.

“Well, you’re here now. So come say hi,” she invited. Grogu burbled at the woman, and she held still while the lady fished the child out of his carrier and cuddled him in her arms.

“Now who's a cute little wrinkly green space baby?” the woman - Sarah really should have asked for her name - cooed, then rubbed her nose against his. “You make sure they take  _ good _ care of you, and if they don’t, you know who will. Awww, man, I’m gonna miss this little nugget. You sure you don’t want to adopt it out? I’ve got a steady job, it won’t go hungry.”

Sarah was mildly mortified by the woman’s audacity, but Din only shook his head.

“No, he stays with me.”

“Us,” she added, and elbowed him. She grinned at him when the helmet turned her way.

“He stays with us,” he amended, and Sarah preened.

“By the way,” the woman said, looking down at the child. “Some guys came around asking about your ship. One of them tried to get in the hanger but I kicked him right back out. You’ve got some people looking for you. Seemed like it might have been important.”

“Who was it?”

Sarah’s fingers twitched, and she suddenly wanted nothing more than to take Grogu and get back on the ship.

“Oh, I don’t know. Was a whole mod podge group of guys, at least five of them, looked like the sort of ruffians I see at the bar on rowdy nights, which is every night here. I  _ might _ have caught the name of the lead guy. Let’s see, hmm… Well I can’t think of it right now, but maybe after you promise to do me a favor, it’ll jog my memory.”

Sarah raised her brows, both irritated and impressed at the woman’s shameless bartering and use of leverage.

She accepted Grogu when the child was handed to her, and tucked him up under her chin.

“What is it you want?” Din asked slowly.

“I’ve got a good friend of mine who needs passage to the estuary moon of Trask. It’s not far away at all.”

“I’ve got more important things to be doing, I don’t pilot a shuttle transport.”

“Oh? Yeah? So you  _ didn’t _ bring that lovely young couple right into town from the middle of nowhere. Yeah, could have fooled me, you big softie. Anyways, my friend here can make it  _ very _ worth your while. You still looking for others of your kind?”

“I am.”

“Well, then, her husband knows where you can find some. I’d stake my life on that being the truth, and you know I’m good for it.”

There was a brief pause, and Sarah could practically  _ feel _ the moment when the Mandalorian caved.

“You vouch for her?” he pressed.

“Absolutely! So, it’s a deal? You’ll take her home?”

“It’s a deal.”

“Great! HEY, LADY, COME ON OUT!” the woman bellowed after she turned around to look at the back end of the hanger. Sarah watched curiously as a young female Frohrk stepped out of hiding. She was dressed in a cozy, homely dress and apron, the look finished off with a tidy yellow scard she wore tucked into her blouse. The stranger had an unusual sort of backpack full of liquid that Sarah couldn’t quite see. “I’ve got you a ride. What’d I tell you? He’s a big ol’ softie, that’s why he wears such good armor. You’re in good hands, trust me.”

“What’s with the case?” Din Djarin prompted as he probably eyed the cyan fluid. Now that the frog-like lady had drawn close, Sarah could see it was full of pale, fleshy blobs that bobbed around in a cyan liquid.

The Frohrk croaked a response, the circular patches on her cheeks expanding in and out. Sarah understood what was said, but the mechanic spoke up first.

“Them’s there are her eggs. Can’t take them into hyperspace, by the way, or it’ll kill ‘em.”

“No deal. We can’t afford to travel at a snail’s pace, the kid’s still got a price on his head.”

“Yeah well he’s in good hands, isn’t he? I’m sure you can take care of any trouble. Besides, you already agreed. The man who came by - His name is Cobb Vanth,” she continued in the same breath, and effectively completed her end of the bargain. “Pretty sure he just wanted to drop by and say hi,” she added with a cheeky grin, hands shoved in her pockets. “I’ll let him know you didn’t have time to stay and chat, don’t worry. You know you’re kind of famous around here now, right? Everyone’s been talking about the stunt you pulled off.”

Sarah really didn’t like this woman, even though a part of her  _ really _ wanted to.

Din’s heavy sigh spoke volumes.

While the two bickered, Sarah stepped around to address their new companion, and reigned in her excitement at the opportunity to practice a language she hadn’t had much use of since she was a teenager.

A simple greeting and an expression of welcome, followed by a quick, croaked question asking for the lady’s name.

Sarah repeated the short, hitched croak to commit it to memory.

“You can speak that?” Din Djarin asked as he looked over.

“I’m not fluent, but yup.”

“Well now that’s useful. Well, anyways, you guys all have fun. Good luck!” the mechanic chirped, then ambled off. “Oh! Your ship’s all fueled up and ready to go, and I tossed in a package of fresh meat for the kid. I remember how much it liked what I cooked up last time. It’s awful scrawny, you need to make the little guy eat more.”

“Trust me, he eats plenty,” Sarah assured, and shook her head as she croaked for the Frohrk to follow. Din Djarin stood outside a moment longer, shook his head, then followed them in even as the ramp began to close.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those curious, the idea of the Beskar ore having a different resonance than Din's finished armor was inspired by the lore on the Wookiepedia, which noted that Beskar has a low, dull tone when struck - yet in the TV show The Mandalorian, it's depicted as having a lovely, higher tune to it when he strikes the Beskar spear against his vambrace in season two.
> 
> I also will be referring to Beskar as both Mandalorian Steel -or- as Mandalorian Iron.... depending on its state of craft, and/or who's talking about it. Get used to it; it's an intentional choice on my part.
> 
> And you didn't read wrong... Sarah didn't bamboozle the poor shopkeep by relying solely on mind tricks for -everything- she said. Never underestimate the persuasive charms of a good salesperson!


	7. Old Friends

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A huge nod of thanks to two of my friends who have provided me with great feedback for little tweaks to Din's dialogue (gotta get that short, to-the-point curtness down!), grammar fixes, scene redo's, hilarious plot ideas, and the -best- ways to make both Din and Sarah suffer and wilt of embarrassment.
> 
> This story has greatly benefitted from their suggestions, and has even taken some unexpected turns I never would have thought of thanks to brainstorming plot ideas with them.
> 
> Hugs and loves <3 You know who you are!

A mile out from the border of the town of Los Islie, a man stood in the shadow of a low-profile ship. With a long, triangular main body attached to a saucer-shaped base, it was rather like a dished streetlight as it lay parked on its flat side.

Dark brown eyes set into a bald, badly scarred face tracked the advance of a speeder with a single passenger. It reduced speed as it drew near, then came to a halt a few yards off. An elderly man got out, tall and thin with a scraggly salt-and-pepper beard, and dressed poorly in ragged clothes that were more patch than original garment.

“It’s done. Put it behind the evac seat between the pipes, no one’s going to find it there,” the visitor announced as he drew to a halt just out of arm’s reach.

“Were you able to confirm the armor is on board?” the scarred man asked, deep voice rough and graveled, throat parched from the desert heat. A wind kicked up and scattered fine grains of sand over their boots, and stirred the heavy, layered black robes of the man who spoke.

“No, he kept us in the lower level, and the chests there were locked. I did what you asked - pay up, Boba,” he demanded, voice borderline desperate with its wavering tremor.

Boba Fett didn’t immediately answer him, and instead lifted his left wrist and slid the sleeve of his robe up to reveal a small metal band. Three black, circular displays adorned it alongside adjustment dials and tiny, fiddly buttons.

He turned the device on and hit the ping control, and waited.

“Well?” the bearded man prompted, impatient.

As a red light blinked once, twice, then turned a solid green, the display screens lit up with data readouts. They didn’t give him a clear heading which was surprising, but the pings were active, and that meant he’d have the information he needed soon enough. Boba tugged his sleeve back down, satisfied, then dug in a pocket and withdrew a heavy pouch of credits.

“Good work,” he rumbled, and tossed the bag to his company. He didn’t wait for a response, only turned on his heel and made for the entrance to his ship. What the newly less-impoverished farmer did now was no longer any concern of his.

With the tracking beacon live, it wouldn’t be long before he reclaimed what was his.

His father’s armor  _ would _ be returned.

By force, if necessary.

~*~

Din Djarin sighed as he flicked the controls to turn on auto pilot, having finished the calculations for mapping out the next stretch of their course to Trask. He’d been maneuvering the ship this way in short sections at a time. So far, they’d managed to avoid crossing paths with anyone, and he was hoping that’d hold true until this job was over.

He’d left the frog lady - Orrit, as had been suggested for the Basic translation of her name - in Sarah’s care, more than happy to leave the two women to their own devices as he focused on his work.

He hadn’t had a chance to talk with his clanmate, and he was burning with questions that would have to wait until they had privacy on the ship again. He kept replaying the last few days’ worth of recent events in his mind, going over what he’d observed as he tried to sort out his thoughts.

When he had spotted the raw Beskar ore, it had managed to hit him harder than when he’d first seen the Imperial stamped blocks his armor had been forged from. Mandalorian steel was rare in this age, and its natural form was almost unheard of. The possibilities for it were endless; it could be formed into one of several possible alloys by a Mandalorian smith, which then set the metal’s limitations for what more could be done with it.

He had not expected Sarah’s intervention, and had been both dully impressed at her cleverness and deeply touched by her willingness to do so.

“Mando?” the woman in question called from below, and he swung away from the console to look at the hatch.

“What?”

“Grogu wants you.”

Warmth bloomed in his chest, and he took one last glance at the settings of the Razor Crest before he made his way down to the lower level. Orrit was seated daintily on Sarah’s assigned locker box, her eggs set on the floor by her feet as she watched them.

He ignored their guest’s curiosity and accepted the Foundling from Sarah, and felt a smile form as he tucked the child up in his arms. Grogu leaned back to look up at him, tiny hands placed against the breastplate for support, and made happy baby noises.

He was such a cute kid.

“What’s up, bud? Bored of the ladies already?” That earned him a confused head tilt, and one of Sarah’s musical laughs.

“I think he just wanted to spend time with you for a bit.”

He nodded once to show he’d heard as he briefly glanced up at her. She was watching the two of them with a soft smile, then turned away when Orrit croaked something. Din watched as a blush formed on her pale cheeks that were already a touch flushed from sunburn.

“What’d she say?” he asked as he adjusted Grogu in his hold, while the child took to exploring the ridges on his armor, tiny claws clicking against the metal.

“Uh.”

He didn’t need a translator to recognize Orrit was now giggling at them. Sarah couldn’t see his raised eyebrows, and he was about to prod her again for an answer when she abruptly waved him off, then croaked and grunted something at their guest.

“Don’t worry about it.”

“I don’t seem to be the one worrying,” he pointed out, amused.

“When do you want to eat? I already fed Grogu, but he’ll be hungry again soon enough.”

“Later,” he answered simply. They did not have much farther to go before they reached their destination, and he could wait until their guest was offloaded. Sarah side-eyed him, hummed noncommittally, then walked away and him with the kid.

He bounced the child in his arms a little, and smiled when Grogu made excited squeals of delight. After deliberating for a bit, he returned to the cockpit and settled him on his lap, far enough back the kid couldn’t reach the controls.

He followed Grogu’s gaze when the child made a hopeful noise and craned his little neck to look up at his protector.

“You want this?” Din guessed as he reached over to put a finger on a spherical knob that adorned one of the levers. Grogu squealed an affirmative, and he unscrewed the orb. Holding it pinched loosely between thumb and forefinger, he kept it at arm’s length. “Go ahead, you can have it.”

Grogu looked at the ball, then back up at him. Din held his breath, and rotated the sphere a little to draw the child’s attention back to it. The kid lifted his hand and concentrated, and faster than he’d managed to before, the ball zoomed out of Din’s grip and plopped into Grogu’s.

“Good job.”

Half an hour later, he looked back when Sarah climbed up into the cockpit with a glass of water and a small plate of food. She reached up and tapped the button to close the blast door behind her, and he sighed.

“That better be for you and the kid.”

“It’s for all three of us. I figured you might want something to drink,” she offered as she sat down. He turned his chair completely around, and pried the ball out of Grogu’s hands with surprisingly little resistance. The kid had seen the food, and made eager grasping hands for it while Din screwed the sphere back onto its rightful place.

“Thank you.” He accepted the cup and offered some to the child first, then hooked a thumb under the lip of his helmet and lifted it up and forward. Refreshed, he set it aside and watched as Sarah held the tray out to Grogu so the child could take his pick of what he wanted.

“How’s our guest holding up?”

“Anxious, trusting. She’s told me a lot about her family, the eggs she has are her last brood. They aren’t fertilized yet, and she was worried they would become inert before she had the chance to make it to her and her husband’s new home.”

“Where’d you learn to speak her language?”

“One of my mom’s best friends was a Frohrk, she was kinda like an aunt to me. Passed away not long before I came of age.”

“I’m glad someone on this ship understands her.”

“How’d you meet that mechanic woman?”

“It’s a long story.”

“We’ve got time,” she pointed out, after having leaned sideways in her chair to peek at the display.

“Do you know how to pilot a ship?” he asked instead, not really in the mood to revisit the memory. It was tied to too many unpleasant things. She let him change topics without fuss, and they spent the remainder of the flight going over controls and scenarios. He’d learned that she had some training, but not for this class of ship.

When Trask came into sight, Din discovered it was a small, mostly blue planet made up of vast swaths of ocean. He ordered his partner to fetch their guest to have both of them strap in. When she returned, he passed her Grogu to watch over, and took them down into the atmosphere.

The landing sequence was rougher than he’d like from turbulence caused by the wild winds that rushed unchallenged over the wide, open field of water stretched out behind the sea-side landing pads. When it was over, they had little to do to prepare for unloading.

Din Djarin was just glad they’d made it to the planet without any fuss.

Sarah had since changed into her trousers and baggy tunic, complete with the Tusken necklace and cowl she’d been gifted. Grogu liked to play with the bone beads, and he watched his clanmate fuss over the child in his carrier while they waited for the door to open. Orrit bounced lightly on her toes in excitement, barely restraining herself as she fought not to overly jostle the precious cargo she carried.

It took refreshingly little time to find her husband in the busy dockyard, and Din went straight to the point as soon as they’d found her mate.

“I was told you know where I can find other Mandalorians - People that look like me.” The ribbets and croaks he got in response meant nothing to him, and he quietly thanked his luck in having Sarah to translate.

“He says there’s a guy in one of the restaurants here who knows where we can find other Mandalorians. He’ll introduce us. We’ve been invited to stay the night at their house,” she added.

“We need to keep moving.”

The Frohrk couple bobbed their heads and led them on, and in short order he found himself in a crowded room of damp, grease stained tables. As their guide sought out his friend, Sarah found them a table to sit at with a good view of the door and a wall at their back.

“I was ready to get out of the sand and heat, but I don’t know if this is actually much better,” his partner mused. The air was muggy from the humidity and press of body heat, and Din was glad for his helmet’s built-in air circulation system. It kept the moisture down to prevent his visor from fogging up.

“If all goes well, we won’t be here for very long.” He hoped it did - Din was no fan of wet and damp, or the deep bodies of water this planet was largely occupied by.

“Hello, there,” a new voice greeted. He turned to face the bulbous-eyed waiter that greeted them, the male Frohrk at his side who croaked with excited gestures as he presumably made introductions. His wife joined him. “I’m told you’re looking for some friends of yours… I might know someone who could take you to them. What can I get you?”

“Food to go, if you can.”

“I can work something out.”

Orrit waved enthusiastically as her husband made his goodbyes and turned to go. Sarah made a strangled noise of protest that drew Din’s and grogu’s attention both.

“What did she say?”

“I’ll tell you later,” Sarah hedged. He didn’t have to wait that long however, as the waiter chortled and translated, much to the young woman’s obvious mortification.

“She said not every woman is lucky enough to have such a knightly companion. With such good hips for her species, she’s a wonderful catch for you.”

“We’re… Not an item,” he corrected, but the Frohrks were already vanished into the crowd, and the waiter only looked at them in amusement.

“Well, then I suppose her bodyguard is just fortunate to have such lovely company! Now, then - I can arrange a meeting if you’d like, but it’s gonna cost you. I’ll have to take time off work here to go make arrangements.”

More than eager to move on to business and leave the awkward moment behind, Din fished out three of the Calamari Flan credits he had taken as a bounty payment some time back.

“Do what you need to.”

The waiter eyed the small stack for a moment, then silently swept it away into his webbed hand and pocketed it. 

“I’ll get you your food now, but it’s going to be at least a day or two before the rest will be settled. Where are you lodging?”

“On my ship. We’re docked on platform Z-12.”

“Enjoy your stay.”

Din Djarin took a seat to wait and turned his attention towards taking stock of the room. They had gone largely ignored and unnoticed when they’d entered, something he was beginning to grow accustomed to since Sarah had come into the picture, so it struck him as unusual to suddenly find a room full of eyes watching their table. He was never sure when or to what extent Sarah extended her abilities outside of the passive wards she had told him of, which protected Grogu from biometric tracking fobs, but he had gathered it was something she utilized more often than not.

Gazes lingered and side-eyes were given from unscrupulous looking individuals as they sipped at their soup or drink, no doubt eying up his armor and weighing the threat he posed against the reward its acquisition would bring them. He was used to that sort of attention. What worried him more was that a few were beginning to show interest in his companions, and he turned to look at them. He couldn’t be certain that news of Grogu’s bounty hadn’t reached Trask.

Sarah had Grogu sitting on her lap, head bowed. Her scarf mostly hid her hair and the sides of her flushed face. Beneath it, he could see that she looked distracted, no longer focused on the environment in the room as she had been when they’d first entered.

“Sarah.”

She reluctantly lifted her bright blue eyes to meet his, and he wondered at her behavior.

“Yes?”

“Pay attention. We’ve been noticed,” he warned softly. “Might be trouble when we leave.”

She stiffened then relaxed, and discreetly flicked her gaze around to assess what he’d already observed. Rosy lips pressed into a thin line, and he was satisfied in the knowledge she was aware of her surroundings again.

Their waiter returned at that moment with a tray laden with three tall, disposable cans secured by an opaque lid and a small wire handle to carry them by. 

“You’ll hear from me soon, take care until then, my friend. This place can be rough,” he warned, and nodded to Sarah and the child. They looked so defenseless even though Din Djarin was well aware that neither of them were, but he did not need to be reminded that they were both still vulnerable. Sarah was quick-witted and a fast study, but she was also inexperienced in the rougher side of life. The child, of course, had much vaster limitations even alongside his powerful sorcery.

“Thank you.” He let Sarah take the food, the cans hung off the fingers of one hand, and followed close behind her as they wove their way through the crowd. Some of the attention they had gathered had faded, but he recognized the trailing gaze of several as they left the bar behind and entered the busy street.

~*~

Sarah felt uneasy, and was angry with herself for letting her focus slip in the diner. Her skin still had goosebumps from the unnerving looks she’d received, and she couldn’t fathom what on earth about her would have garnered  _ that _ much notice except if they were interested in Goru. Din Djarin had guided her to take the lead, his steps following close behind her own as she wound their way through the crowded port town.

As she thought about it, something the waiter had said came back to her. It was possible onlookers assumed she’d hired the Mandalorian she traveled with, which could cause an assumption in thinking her wealthy.

She hesitated at the mouth of a long, narrow alleyway they had to use in order to enter the outer port area, and wished she knew the city better so she could take them another way even if it took longer to get there.

But she didn’t, and her silent companion made no sign he intended them to go another way. So she stepped out of the open and into the claustrophobic press of walls and piles of crates, barrels, and other things one would expect to find in a place like this.

They were halfway down the narrow lane when the stormy sky over head opened up with a light drizzle of rain. Shortly after, it became a torrential downpour that chilled her to the bone and caused Grogu to squeal and complain, then willingly duck his head under her scarf for all the good it did.

She was more than a little relieved when they made it out of the dark walk, and felt even better when the Razor Crest finally came into sight through the thick sheets of water pouring down. Familiar, welcoming with a promise of shelter, it felt like seeing  _ home. _

When they were safely back aboard with the rain pounding outside, Sarah let the Mandalorian take Grogu from her. She was shivering, and mildly shocked at just how cold this planet could be. It had been a pleasant temperature when they’d arrived, almost tropical, but now she felt like she’d been dunked in a bath of ice water. Din Djarin was either warm enough in his many layers or much better at hiding his discomfort.

“I’ll grab you some blankets. Go,” he ordered. She didn’t argue, trailing water as she listened to the sounds of him getting Grogu out of his carrier and settled in his blanketed playpen, bundled up.

She vanished into the shower room, and it wasn’t until she had stripped herself of wet clothes that she realized she hadn’t stopped to grab dry ones. When he knocked at the door, she stared at it. It wasn’t the kind of door she could open part-way.

“Leave them outside, please,” she said finally, and waited until his steps faded away before she quickly cued the door open and snatched them up. She used the smallest to dry off, then wrapped the thickest one around herself and walked out of the room. Her wet clothes she’d left behind spread out over the counter and floor. Her guns and boots, however, left with her.

“Thank you,” she said through clattering teeth as she dropped the boots beside her storage crate, then carefully set the gun harness down on the floor. “Is Grogu alright? I had no idea this place got so cold. Orrit made such a fuss about needing warmth for raising her froglets.”

“We’ll find you something warmer soon. The kid’s fine.”

Sarah crouched down and carefully shuffled the blanket around herself to slip an arm out, and fumbled with the buttons to key open the crate’s lock. Her fingers were almost numb, and the cold metal floor of the ship and cool air wasn’t helping as she rummaged for her spare clothes while hyper-aware of her nakedness beneath the blanket.

She supposed she could have hopped in the shower to warm up faster, but it took time for it to heat the water, and she just wanted to be  _ dry. _

She felt the thin fabric of her tunic she had taken to using during combat training, then discarded it in favor of the thicker material of her green dress, a garment she had not wanted but was beginning to grow inordinately grateful to have. With that and her leather-patched pants to go underneath, she’d be warm enough.

A glance showed that Din was at the storage cabinet rummaging, and she shut her trunk. She was immediately greeted by the sight of Grogu behind it, who had shuffled over to look at her. The child awkwardly struggled his way up onto the chest, then reached for her.

Sarah smiled then set aside her dress, and reached up to pat him on the head as the child bumped against her blanket-swaddled chest. Claw-tipped fingers curled in the fabric, tickling her skin beneath.

“Let me get dressed first, then we can cuddle up,” she promised. He sat down with an unhappy sigh, and she withheld a chuckle.

After a brief detour to the shower room to change, Sarah found herself comfortably bundled up on the floor with Grogu dozing cozily in her arms. He stirred and woke when Din Djarin sat down nearby.

“Soup’s put away for later. You warm enough?”

“Getting there. How long do you think the storm will last?”

“No idea.”

She looked down as Grogu patted her on the arm, his head sticking out from the blanket she’d wrapped around them both. He looked up at her expectantly, and she stared into his wide-pupiled eyes. There was just a hint of soft brown in his irises, or maybe a dark gold, which lent a softness and depth to them that was utterly charming.

“What’s up?” she asked, and was less startled this time to feel a now-familiar pressure touch her mind. She held his gaze, and focused on letting the foreign thoughts seep into her mind, welcoming the child’s presence.

In a flash her vision was momentarily obstructed by an image he had shown her before, and she hummed. Unsure how well he could sense her uncertainty, she voiced her thoughts.

“I’m not sure that’s safe to do here.”

“What?” Din asked as he looked over.

“Meditation. Grogu shared a thought.”

“We’ve got some time on our hands, and nothing’s getting on the ship before we’d have time to react. Might as well.”

Sarah eyed his wet armor and dripping clothes, and was mildly impressed he was willing to meditate in a distinctly uncomfortable state.

“Have you meditated before?”

“Yes.”

“Alright then. I guess you’re our teacher this time, Grogu,” Sarah stated. The child in question began squirming to get free of her hold and the blankets, and she let him. He tumbled his way free and waddled over to the crates, then struggled to climb one. She almost gave him a hand up, then decided it was good for him to build independence and strength, and so let him be. She stood and picked one of the blankets up off the floor, then laid it on the other side of the short wall of storage containers that framed her makeshift bed. Protected from the cold floor, she took a seat.

Grogu sat on top of the crate and watched them with perked ears, eyes shining bright with interest, and she couldn’t help but feel both mildly perturbed and rather intrigued to see him close his eyes and adopt a distinctly meditative pose. His hands rested above tiny knees hidden under the voluminous folds of his robes, and he even pinched two of his three fingers, just the very tip of his claws touching. Delicate and precise, the child had clearly done this before.

Entirely unsure what to expect and willing to find out, Sarah adopted her own meditative stance, legs crossed with her hands resting lightly at ease on her thighs, spine straight. She watched Din Djarin kneel down on the bare floor across from her, curled fists placed against the plates of armor protecting his legs, and closed her eyes.

She did not try to empty her mind or force thoughts to leave, and instead simply focused on her surroundings. She listened to the muffled sound of rain pounding against metal and the quieter whirr of the Razor Crest’s air vents and idle noises.

Once she was comfortable with that, she then began to pull her focus inwards, letting go of sensation as she opened her mind to a deeper level of self awareness. She took stock of her body, of the aches and sores she had been ignoring, and of the small discomforts of cold air against the back of her hands and her exposed collarbone and neck. She’d left her blanket draped over her shoulders, and it offered a contrast of pleasant warmth against her back.

Having acknowledged the state of her body, she drew her focus further inward and into the jumble of emotions that were always present even when they did not make themselves noticed. Her anxieties, fears, discomforts - these were sharp and unpleasant, like a ripple of electricity through a calm fog of other sensations; Joy, contentment, pride, and a warm, growing affection for the two individuals she kept company with that had so quickly become the center of her world.

She acknowledged each before then letting them go, a well practiced routine she moved through with familiarity. Finally, she was ready to expand her senses outward.

As she did, Sarah was immediately aware of Grogu’s presence to her left, a shining warmth that radiated a serenity and deep focus at odds with his supposed youth. The Force flowed from him in palpable waves that seemed to saturate the immediate area around the three of them.

Din Djarin was harder for her to sense, especially in the wake of Grogu’s powerful energy field. When she found him, she was surprised to find that he did radiate his own distinctive aura - it was kept close to his skin like a protective cloak, and radiated a cool, calm stillness that felt rife with possibility. His state was the calm before a storm, a grounded center, the honed blade held at rest yet ready to strike at any moment.

This in itself was unsurprising, coming from the experienced warrior.

For a time she simply lingered there in that expanded state of awareness, and picked out further details of her companions as they came to her attention. She wondered if Din Djarin felt anything, or if his was an isolated meditation.

Something in the atmosphere shifted then, and she sucked in a sharp breath through her nose as Grogu’s aura flared up, brilliant and commanding as it wove its way around her mind and settling over her like a second skin.

She did not resist the sensation, and moments later was granted a growing awareness of a greater depth of understanding as the connection deepened. She no longer sensed the two males as distinct individuals seated apart from her, but felt their energy close and intimate, mingled with her own as their connection seemed to spiral into an ever-tightening bead of focus.

She felt Grogu’s calm focus and child-like determination, and the strain he endured to participate in this exercise. It had been so very long since he had been able to practice this with another, yet he had not forgotten the instruction he’d been given all those years ago in the temple.

Din Djarin was like cold metal pressed against her forehead, steady and focused, neither reaching out to them nor withdrawing his presence as his mind repeated the cadences and sing-song lessons he had learned as a Foundling. She felt his spark of surprise the moment he became aware of her attention, and then there was a question forming.

Before it could form into a full-fledged thought, Grogu caught both their focus as a singular thread of concentrated energy built and spread, and wrapped around the three of them.

In the next instant, Sarah was no longer on the ship.

~*~

She sat cross-legged on a firm cushion, placed on the floor in a room familiar to her only because she’d glimpsed it before from Grogu’s shared memories.

“Choose a core, you must,” an elder’s gravelly voice instructed her, and Sarah looked up to find herself sitting across from a being that looked like a much,  _ much _ older version of Grogu. Obviously of the same species, this elder looked at her with darkly glittering eyes that felt like seeing into the deep abyss of space. He radiated the same serenity and calm composure that Sarah had come to associate with Grogu, but it was distinguished by a broader depth and vastness that was nearly overwhelming. “Hmph. Distracted, you are. Not ready for this, perhaps.”

Wrangling her surprise, she cleared her throat.

“Probably not, but I’m here and willing.”

“Oh? Know what you are willing for, do you?”

“I trust I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t important. Are you related to Grogu?” she asked, curious and hopeful.

The elder’s ears folded back slightly as he  _ hrmmm’d _ at her, lips pressed into a tight, almost pout-like line due to the shape of his face.

“Related, we are. Relevant, that is not.”

Questions abounded, and Sarah furrowed her brows as she wondered what was appropriate to ask. She  _ definitely _ disagreed with his claim of irrelevance.

“Hah! Try too hard, you do. Think less, and feel more, hrm, hrm. Let the Force guide you, you must.”

She opened her mouth to ask what he meant, then quickly shut it with a spike of frustration. Think less, feel more. Right.

So she focused on her senses, and let the information they gathered filter towards her. This space felt all too real, with solid walls, roof, and floor, the soft press of cloth beneath her legs, and a lazy drift of pleasantly warm air currents that stirred the air around them.

She could feel the intensity of the stranger’s regard as he studied her, and abruptly realized that her mind was not shielded from him. Alarm flared bright and sharp before she quickly reminded herself that she was not in danger.

At least, she didn’t  _ feel _ like she was, and she didn’t think Grogu would have coaxed her into something that put her at risk. Logic might have any number of arguments to encourage her to second-guess her sense of security in this environment, but she trusted her intuition. This stranger was not a threat to her.

The green creature’s eyes squinted slightly as he observed her changing moods without comment, though she recognized the subtle shift in his expression from her growing familiarity of Grogu's body language.

“Hmm. Focus you have; misplaced, it is. On yourself your focus must stay.”

His words were accompanied with a silent elaboration, a gentle rebuff that deflected her attention from him and back at her. Sarah rebelled without thinking, not used to being the one turned away from observing. Her wavering attention returned, and her cheeks flushed as she quickly managed her knee-jerk reaction and withdrew a bit from examination of the stranger. He looked surprised, large ears flicking up as he straightened to be a little taller where he sat cross-legged, clawed hands resting on the brown cane laid over his lap. She had a distinct sense that he was impressed.

“Powerful, your mind is. Serve you well this will, against the dark. But  _ focus!” _ he exclaimed sharply, and Sarah jumped at the abrupt flash of passionate expression.

“You said I have to choose a core?” she asked after a moment, having remembered his opening question.

“Hrmmm. Yes. Need it, you will.”

“I don’t understand,” she admitted, and wondered if she was failing some hidden test here. If she was supposed to  _ feel _ out the answer, she had no idea what it was she was supposed to even be looking for, or what the context was. “Who are you?”

She felt her cheeks heat when the stranger’s stoic visage became expressive again. He regarded her with what might be impatience or frustration, she wasn’t entirely sure, but it made her feel like she was doing a very good job at everything  _ except _ what it was he wanted her to be.

He seemed to relent, and the figure slowly rose from his cross-legged position on a raised stool, then hopped down to amble closer to her. Standing, he was a little shorter than eye-level to her cross-legged position on the pillow, and she got a better view of his eyes. Dark, wide-blown pupils surrounded by a thin differentiation of some vaguely lighter shade.

“Hrmmm. Yoda, I am. A Jedi Grandmaster, I was.”

“Was?”

Whatever patience he’d mastered for indulging her curiosity vanished with a stamp of his cane and a harsh  _ “Bah!” _ as he turned away from her, and began to pace. Sarah watched him utterly bewildered.

“Not important, that is. Too curious you are. Focused, you must be.”

“On what?” she asked, and sighed. Clearly, they had different priorities.

“Know the answer, you do.” He turned to face her, both of his hands methodically placed over the top of his cane as he met her gaze with a steady frown.

Sarah shifted her weight.

_ ‘Feel more, think less,’ _ she thought, and turned her focus inward, searching for the answer she realized she  _ could _ feel. It waited on the edges of her conscious mind that was so occupied with analyzing her situation and the mystery Yoda posed.

It came to her as a steady, sure realization.

“The core.”

“Mrm. Yes, the core. Choose you must, to build your lightsaber. Need it you will, in dark days to come. Survive without one, you will not.”

“Lightsaber?” Even as Sarah asked, she had an inkling suspicion of the answer.

Yoda stared at her for several long moments, then hummed and reached under his outer robe. She caught a glimpse of the layered garment beneath and the slim belt that circled his waist, and then he withdrew a slender metallic object that hung from his hip.

With a practiced motion he turned a knob on the hilt, and a brilliant green blade of thrumming energy burst into being. Immediately reminded of the red blade that had sunk into her shoulder, Sarah flinched.

“Sense your fear, I can.”

She reached up to place a hand over the spot where the imaginary injury had been dealt, lips pressed in a thin line.

“And I can feel your reservation. You don’t trust me,” she guessed.

He squinted at her, huffed, and turned the lightsaber off.

“No, trust you I do not. Trust in the  _ Force, _ I do.”

Burning with a million and one questions, Sarah reluctantly brought them back on topic.

“I was given something similar by the Tuskens. It’s in bad repair. I don’t know how to fix something like that, or if it even works.”

He seemed surprised,  _ hrm’ing _ at her in a high octave as he straightened and leaned back a touch, his head tilted as his ears raised.

“Already a hilt you have? Good, this is.” She waited as he ambled back over to her, and looked down as he sat directly in front of her, their knees practically touching. He held his lightsaber up on the palm of his hand, and Sarah marveled to watch it slowly rise into the air and spin slowly. “The weapon of all Jedi, this is. Build yours you must.”

Before she could ask how to go about that, Yoda swirled his fingers and flexed them, and Sarah watched transfixed as the parts of his saber disconnected, then drifted apart from each other to spread out in the air. There were a few tiny screws and slender pegs, but it seemed like everything otherwise fit together via flawlessly fabricated, interlocking parts.

“The core, this is. Many to choose from there are.” Here he shook his head, and she sensed a deep, welling sadness and vague touch of regret as he took a moment to collect himself. “Gone, many choices are. Destroyed, stolen, lost.”

“What do I need for a core?”

“Through meditation, know that you will.”

She pursed her lips and resisted the urge to press him for at least  _ some _ kind of hint. Moving on, Sarah nodded at the displayed parts of his saber that still floated in the air.

When she started asking questions about the different parts and what their functions were, she was relieved to find Yoda perfectly willing to educate her on this much at least. From the tuning flange that protruded off the side near the place the blade would extend from, to the ditanium power cell and the core’s housing, she repeated the names and functions back to him until she was certain she would be able to remember the most important parts.

When he began to reassemble his blade, Sarah thought of a question she desperately wanted advice on.

“I was told I’m touched by a thread of taint. Someone has been prying into my dreams.”

Yoda’s gaze flicked up to her, inscrutable, and she noted that he did not seem surprised.

“Hrmmm. Touched, yes, by the dark side of the Force. Resist it you do. Dangerous, the call of the dark side. Resist you must.”

Sarah felt a spike in her own emotions, a burning ferocity that hardened her gaze as she thought of her success in rebuffing the worst of the psychic attacks she had suffered under. She would  _ not _ succumb. Yoda clearly felt her reaction, and for the first time since meeting him he looked not only calm, but relaxed, content.

“Hmmm, strong in the force, you are. Resist, you will.”

“I will not endanger those I protect.”

That washed the content right off Yoda’s face, and Sarah lifted her hand just in time to block the sharp  _ thwack _ of his cane as he tried to rap it on her head. She quickly reassessed her impression of his reflexes; for someone who ambled about with obvious age, he could still move  _ fast. _ Looks could be deceiving.

“No! Too attached you are. Good it is, to protect, yes, good - but wrong you are to make this first of thought. To resist the dark side, from within strength must come.” He emphasised his words by tapping her chest with the end of his stick, right above her heart.

Sarah was baffled. Whether she was protecting someone or not, she had zero interest in being corrupted by some spooky hooded madman who was as liable to choke her to death as he was to try persuading her to join him.

Yoda scrutinized her, eyes squinted as he leaned forward and intruded on her personal space until she had to lean back or else bump noses with him.

“Hrmmm. Wrong, perhaps, I was,” he admitted slowly. “Balanced your emotions are, in line along sense and reason.”

“Ah… That’s good?” she offered, cross-eyed. Yoda harrumphed at her and leaned back.

“Much to learn, you have. Meet again we will. For now, meditate you must. Yes, meditate.” He turned away from her to waddle back to his round seat, and climbed up into it. Sarah’s chest tightened at the realization this was about to end - she could already feel the room around her beginning to unravel.

“How do I remove the taint?” she blurted.

Yoda scrutinized her, mouth pressed tightly closed as his ears drifted back. She thought he might not answer her, but just as her vision was beginning to dim and the room around them started to dissolve into a black nothingness, he spoke.

“Ready, you are. Gone, it shall be, when the light shines in balance with the dark, and the Force you wield with purpose. Train, you must.”

“How do I--”

~*~

Din Djarin was not certain what to expect from this group meditation, but prepared himself for the probable outcome of either Grogu or Sarah - or both, perhaps - invading his mind for telepathic communication.

He was rather surprised when that didn’t immediately happen, and found himself left to his own devices and thoughts as he went through the steps he had been trained to follow. First he relaxed his muscles, one at a time starting from his toes all the way to the features of his face, and all the while maintained a keen focus of his surroundings. Always alert, always aware, ready at any moment to burst into action when the need arose.

Minutes passed and he still felt nothing unusual, only his own familiar thoughts. He began to chant in his mind old Mandalorian cadences and snatches of songs he had been taught as a boy, some of his first lessons in the lore and history of the tribe. Many of them served as the starting foundation of his studies in honing not only his physical prowess as a fighter, but in the cultivation of a calm mindset and steady focus.

_ Taung sa rang broka Mando'ade ka'rta.  _

The ash of the Taung beats strong within the Mandalorians' heart.

_ Dha Werda Verda a'den tratu, _

We are the rage of The Warriors of the Shadow,

_ Manda'yaim kandosii adu. _

The first noble sons of Mandalore.

_ Duum motir ca'tra nau tracinya. _

Let all those who stand before us light the night sky in flame.

_ Gra'tua cuun hett su dralshy'a. _

Our vengeance burns brighter still.

_ Kom'rk tsad droten troch nyn ures adenn. _

The gauntlet of Mandalore strikes without mercy.

_ Dha Werda Verda a'den tratu, _

We are the rage of The Warriors of the Shadow,

_ Manda'yaim kandosii adu. _

The first noble sons of Mandalore.

_ Duum motir ca'tra nau tracinya. _

Let all those who stand before us light the night sky in flame.

_ Gra'tua cuun hett su dralshy'a. _

Our vengeance burns brighter still.

As he finished the final verse, he was abruptly aware of an audience. Unsure how long Sarah had been present at the edges of his mind, he wondered what she thought of the old Mandalorian song. Before the thought was even halfway formed, he felt goosebumps over every inch of his rain-damp skin, right before his entire world upended.

He was no longer sitting in the ship with eyes closed, listening to the drum of rain and the soft breaths of his clanmates.

It could have been mere moments as easily as it could have been years, but for a time he was suspended in sheer nothingness. A dark abyss, devoid of all sensory stimuli, the space still managed to feel at once vast and exposed from the lack of cover, and claustrophobic from the suffocating darkness that closed in around him.

Eventually, he became aware of something. He did not know what it was, but it raised the hair on the back of his neck and arms and caused Din Djarin to pivot where he stood. As he did, there was suddenly the sense of solid ground beneath his feet and a defined space around him, and yet his eyes still could not see.

The  _ something _ was familiar, he realized. Feeling it was not unlike the way in which his senses could at times pick out a lurking enemy when he actively strained his senses under the duress of a life or death situation, even though he may have been otherwise unable to see, hear, or smell them. It was pure instinct.

The sensation grew stronger, like it was drawing closer, and on reflex he reached to draw his blaster.

His hips were bare. At first he felt the leather holster of his gun, and then the cloth of his pants, and then suddenly bare skin as he was stripped of his very identity. He felt exposed, raw, and a nameless sort of panic surged inside of him as he brought a shaking hand up to his face and felt the bared features.

All at once the area before his eyes rippled, and a flood of color and light exploded in his vision. He found himself on the ground kneeling in stone ruins, once again clothed in his full ensemble of armor and weaponry. He did not recognize where he was, but rolled to his feet and drew his blaster as he looked around, senses strained.

“So, the time has come at last,” a woman’s voice spoke. He whirled and took aim, but nothing was there. Sweat beaded against his forehead as he looked around the abandoned looking place. His boots scuffed cracked, tiled floor with each shift of his weight, over-loud in the eerie silence. Leather creaked. A breeze stirred dried leaves to a clattering tumble before dying off.

Broken slabs of massive, dark gray pillars were scattered in a loose circle around a center dias of raised stone. Dry leaves and lichen covered the cracked floor, and he recognized with a start that it was decorated in a familiar writing. Mando’a, the native script of his tribe, faded and indecipherable but for the stray letter or partial word from generations exposed to the elements.

“You will break the bounds of tradition without the shattering of their tenants. Perhaps, you already have.”

“Who are you?” he demanded, absorbing their words to reflect more closely on later, and ignored the rising surge of alarm he felt. His heart pounded maddly against his ribs, and he felt like a cornered animal, singled out and under scrutiny.

“A memory.”

“I’ve never been here.”

“No, but your ancestors have.”

“Show yourself.”

“So direct. Lower your blaster, kin, and I shall.”

For a long moment he didn’t move, and then slowly he let his arm drop. Muscles tensed, coiled to move at the slightest provocation. Strung out on a fine hair trigger, he waited with bated breath.

One moment he was looking at the empty space of the ruins, and the next there was suddenly another person with him. He recognized instantly that it was a woman by the gentle curves of her slim silhouette, and the subtly shaped breastplate of fitted armor. She was tall, far taller than he, and slender like a reed. Her armor was pure Beskar, well worn and showing signs of wear from a lifetime’s worth of use, if not more than one. Bright yellow paint was chipped and faded, and her helmet bore a single red stripe drawn vertically across the left-hand side of its face. If she wore a signet, he could not see it.

“We do not have much time; your connection to the Force is not strong, though it weaves a net around you from the events in which you have placed yourself. Will you listen to what I have to say?”

“Yes.” In a cautious show of good faith he holstered his weapon, but left his hand hovering over the grip.

“Good. The songs of Mandalore must once again be sung under Concordia’s gaze; the past must reconcile with the present to forge a future of balance between the necessities of violence and the prosperity of peace.”

“Is this some kind of prophecy?” he questioned warily.

“It is my plea; we are a dying kind, and if left unchecked, our songs will soon fade from the memory of time. I did not know who would come, only that I would have this chance to pass my message on. Do you love our people?”

“I am Mandalorian.” It was all the explanation that was needed, and he watched the stranger’s helmet dip in a nod of acknowledgement.

“Then with this I task you; bring about the unity of our people. We have splintered only in the constructs of our own narratives; we are all as one. Mandalore is not yet a dead planet - life can once again be tended here.”

Din Djarin flexed his fingers, throat gone dry.

“How do you expect me to accomplish that?” he asked, and had to force the words out in a rough voice he couldn’t quite hide the tremor of. This was too unexpected, too overwhelming.

“That is for you to determine.”

She took a step forward then, paused to gauge his reaction, and then continued towards him. Din held his ground, and watched in silence as the woman withdrew something from a pouch on her belt. She offered to him, and he held out his hand to accept.

Into his palm dropped a small chunk of raw Beskar ore, the size of his thumb and made up of a single sphere.

_ “This _ is prophecy,” she began, then took a step back. “You will aid the one who walks the middle path. Dark forces seek to tip the balance of the Force to their perversion; she is the light that will guide the dawning of a new age, and you her shield against the dark. She will be lost to you,” she warned unexpectedly, and Din Djarin’s blood ran cold as the stranger continued, “And found only if unity holds stronger than difference. Keep her well.”

“Sarah?” he croaked in disbelief, and the world was suddenly spinning around him. His vision wavered though he exerted all his willpower into maintaining his footing and his focus on the Mandalorian before him. “Who are you?” he demanded.

“I am Tarre Vizsla, the first Mandalorian to be part of the Jedi order. You know my songs.”

_ “What?” _ he demanded, and looked up and down at the obviously very  _ female _ build. That couldn’t be right. Tarre Vizsla was a man. This was madness; illusion.

“Or what remains of them,” she amended, and he could hear the sardonic smile in her voice. “ _ Aliit ori'shya tal'din, Jetii’cabur. _ This is the Way.”

He had no chance to answer. In the next instant, he was slammed back into his body, drenched in sweat from head to toe, heart hammering, choked for breath.

~*~

It had been many years since Grogu had openly used his connection to the Force. His time in captivity had forced the little one to hide his talents in order to survive; it had not taken him long to learn the perils of revealing himself, or what manner of darkness could be brought out in individuals who beheld a child born with such power. Some feared him, while others had sought to use him to better some personal agenda. Precious few had shown the same level of respect and genuine affection he found in the man of cold metal and gentle hands, and the woman of kind smiles and haunted secrets.

He knew that important events were unfolding around him, and felt at times helpless, unable to grasp the great complexities he knew to be for he could  _ feel _ them, yet he was unable to extend the influence over it that a fully grown Jedi of his kind would have been able to do. He was not the helpless babe so many assumed him to be, an underestimation he often encouraged, and yet he was still so far from full maturity. It was maddening, and frustrating, and at times made him just want to go to sleep and pretend it all went away if he ignored it hard enough.

Even so, Grogu did not give up. He could do  _ something  _ to change his life for the better, and he felt that improving the happiness of those immediately close to him was one of the ways that could happen.

He liked it when Sarah smiled. The bright glitter of her eyes matched the soothing radiance he felt swirl around her in lazy, grounded patterns like a woven net of security. She was like him; able to sense and interact with things beyond the average being’s notice.

And then there was his surrogate father, the one who had taken him from his lonely isolation. Though he had been surrounded by a multitude of beings, none had ever connected with him as he had the first time his cradle was opened and he awoke to see the shiny helmet looking down at him. Some had been very cruel.

Din Djarin was not a Force user, and yet Grogu could feel it drawing him to the human like a brilliant landmark of pleasant energy in a world so touched by darkness. When he had first revealed his powers out of dire need to save his caretaker’s life from the charging Mudhorn, Grogu had been terrified. Terrified at the thought of losing that light and being sent back into dark isolation, terrified of being hurt if the human had reacted poorly to the revelation.

He did not know what would happen to the careful balance he had found, the security that came from being hidden. It had been both unexpected and wonderful when the gentle warrior had not regarded him either as a frightening thing to be feared or as a useful tool to be extorted, but as what Grogu felt he was; someone very lost and in need of shelter.

Since then, their bond had grown, and Grogu had become steadily more comfortable in the man’s presence. At times his environment was frightening, filled with strange beings and unfamiliar places, and often dangerous. Yet he had faith he would be protected, and struggled to hold onto that desperate balm of security.

Now, he felt out the auras of his caretakers, and followed an intuition he did not fully comprehend yet knew intrinsically that he needed to follow. Not because he was told to, or expected to, or even that it had the great and terrifying weight of something incredibly important, but because he liked the way it felt to do it. It made him feel warm and complete, whole in a way he had not felt since he was very young, younger than even he was now.

And if this also brought the two humans together, Grogu could only see the benefits; if they stayed as one, it meant that he could stay with them both and not have to fear choosing one over the other, or of having to say goodbye. He liked his new family.

It terrified him that his father wanted to return him to the Jedi, even though he felt that this, too, was something he needed. He wanted to know what had happened to the others, the fate of another family that he had little memory of in only the most vague of emotional resonance, warm and bittersweet.

Grogu was determined to make it known, when the time came, that though he wished for answers and to fulfill the need that drove him into this unknown, he did not want to be cast away and left behind. Not  _ again. _

And so even as he maintained his focus on the meditative trance, pushed away his doubts and insecurities to cultivate a pure state of awareness and detached focus, and allowed the Force to guide him through steps he only halfway understood the gravity of, Grogu instilled his own desires in his work. His parents had already started to connect, drawn together first by duty, and then by the nature of their interactions. When he had discovered them sharing an intimate embrace with a bond of joined thoughts, the Force twined around his caretakers in captivating ways, Grogu had realized for the very first time that it was not only _ Jedi _ who the Force could affect in such a deep and profound way.

It had made him so excited, so suffused with happiness, to learn that the gap could be bridged. And it had given him an idea.

He could sense them both now, his father’s aura tightly woven and far more fortified than Grogu had known it to be since before Sarah had begun training his mind. His mother’s presence was a pleasant summer breeze that flooded the room and extended well beyond the bounds of the ship, blanketing them all under her powerful and protective presence.

Neither resisted his influence, trusting him even though he felt their individual uncertainties, and when the moment felt right Grogu gathered up the powerful rope of energy he had woven with his mind, and looped it around the two.

As he did, he began to release the flow of the Force that had been steadily building up inside of and around him. He neither knew exactly what it would do or why it was he must do it, only that it allowed him this precious opportunity to touch it and meddle, so long as he did not intrude upon its path.

As the rope tightened, he felt the shift as both humans slipped fully into their trances, minds and souls elsewhere from their bodies while the young padawan strained to hold the connection for them and protect them from any danger of outside malevolence. It was equally difficult to do so for both humans; Din Djarin took great concentration, for his father could not assist in the effort as Sarah could, and did. His mother was touched by an unsettling spot of darkness, like a thin cord formed of the most unpleasant things one could think of and then something more sinister, more  _ evil, _ and he labored to prevent that thread from being allowed to meddle during this vulnerable time for her. His efforts seemed to be working.

Grogu imagined the three of them together and happy, safe and warm with full bellies and dry shelter, and felt when their connection spiked to a feverish pitch before it snapped taut.

The energy utterly left him in an overwhelming rush until Grogu felt a familiar exhaustion as it creeped through his tiny limbs, his mind pulled towards the lulling calm of a sleep he did not want, yet knew he had to embrace to regain his strength and recover.

As he wavered and began to fall, Grogu felt a spike of pure joy at the recognition his attempt had worked.

The wash of energy had done its part, most of it dissipating as it was no longer needed, having touched each human with a subtle mark of prophecy that lingered even when all was said and done. And more, the weave of the Force that connected and enhanced the bond between the two humans had been strengthened, drawn together by Grogu’s own hand.

Pleased that he had been able to so thoroughly tie the two together, and secure in his belief that now things were as they should be, the child let himself pass into a deep, restorative slumber.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I will save you having to google it - and tell you now that all Mando'a used in the story will either be translated directly in the writing, or in the end notes of each respective chapter ;) If I miss something, poke me, and I'll provide a translation.
> 
> "Aliit ori'shya tal'din, Jetii'cabur" - "Family is more than blood," is a Mandalorian saying, as they are a culture that widely disregards genetic lineage and is known to adopt grown adults into their fold, as well as children as Foundlings. "Jetii'cabur" is my own mashed-together word.
> 
> It literally translates as "Jedi Guardian/protector," but in the context Tarre Viszla uses it, she's implying it to be more "Jedi's protector" as a sort of title.
> 
> The song Din sings in his head is not my composition, you can read more about it here:  
> https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Dha_Werda_Verda
> 
> \---
> 
> Fun trivia: Yoda (actual, honest-to-goodness-Yoda) wasn't supposed to be in this story. At all. Ever. I was writing at like three AM in the morning and suddenly Sarah's talking to him and I'm just like "WAIT. WHAT? NO. YOU CAN'T JUST INVITE YOURSELF INTO MY WRITING."
> 
> True story. My friends had to put up with me screeching about it.
> 
> \---
> 
> Why is Tarre Viszla a woman, you ask? Good question! The answer is because I wanted to write a female Mandalorian in the scene, and had mad giggles at the idea of toying with a figure of such legendary and historical prominence in Mandalorian culture... having had some details fudged over the generations since they'd passed on. History isn't always accurate!


	8. New Friends

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Time for some good ol' butt-kicking!

When Sarah slammed back into awareness of her own body and the immediate surrounding environment, she was badly disorientated. At first, alarmingly, she couldn’t  _ see. _ She could hear, smell, and feel the cool air and the blankets beneath her and the fact her eyes were wide open, and she was intimately aware of Grogu and Din Djarin nearby, but it was several long moments before her eyes decided to work again.

In that brief time she felt true panic, because she could hear Din let out a pained-sounding gasp followed by labored, hitched breathes and sounds of distress which were very uncharacteristic of the hardened warrior. It sounded like he’d tipped over backwards or something, with a heavy thud and a loud clinking scuff of metal-on-metal. Something tinked dully as it rolled away on the floor.

“Sarah?” he croaked, and she realized she wasn’t able to  _ talk _ yet, either. Her mouth formed around his name, around questions of if he was alright, yet nothing came out. Her energy was scattered all around the room. As she gathered herself back up, it came to her with a disjointed flow of sensory details, and made her queerly aware of the space she could not yet actually view.

She tried again to speak, tried to ask him what was wrong, if he was alright, if Grogu was alright - though she could feel his presence, and in it found assurance the child was, indeed, just fine. She heard a rustle of cloth and creak of leather that drew swiftly closer.

Warm hands settled on her shoulders, then one cupped her cheek. She reached blindly, and her hands bumped against cool metal and rough cloth until she found his arms to steady herself.

“Sarah?” Din hoarsely repeated, worry etched into his voice.

Light began to bloom in her sight as she breathed deeply, then all at once the remaining magnitude of her energy returned back to her body and Sarah could see again, and felt whole and complete in a way she didn’t quite understand.

“Din,” she breathed, then immediately looked past him to see Grogu. The child was laying on his side, breathing deep and steady, sound asleep. Concern mingled with relief, and then she turned back to face the Mandalorian who had yet to let go of her. “That was absolut-- _ oof!” _ The air rushed out of her lungs as she was suddenly crushed against his chest, armor, weapons, and all. He didn’t seem to care or notice that the edge of his helmet was digging hard into the side of her face, her ear bent at an awkward, uncomfortable angle.

_ “What did you see?” _ he demanded. A hand protectively cradled the back of her head while his other arm wrapped tightly around her shoulders and back, effectively caging her against him. She could feel his distress as a nearly physical force in the air around them, alarming and powerful, and Sarah wondered what  _ he _ had seen to so terribly shake him.

“I- Let go,” she wheezed as she squirmed. He loosened his hold only just enough that she could draw back and breathe again. Bewildered and concerned, she gave him a hasty, greatly paraphrased rundown of her visit with the enigmatic Jedi Master, Yoda.

“That’s  _ all?” _ he asked, incredulous. “A weapons lesson?”

Sarah stared at him as she mirrored the sentiment for entirely different reasons, then reached up and cautiously placed her hand against the side of his helmet where she knew his cheek was beneath it. He stiffened, but didn’t bat it away, and she willed him to feel the comfort she liked to think the touch would illicit were he another, simpler man, one who did not have his face hidden and could freely indulge in the world. It was not a mind trick - she simply desired him to feel her own offer of emotional support, for the man was clearly rattled beyond the reach of words alone.

“What did  _ you _ see? No - Wait. Let me settle Grogu first, then we’ll sit and we’ll talk. Get your bearings, Din Djarin,” she murmured. She made use of his full name in the hope it would help snare the man’s attention, and jar him from the state he seemed trapped in. That she also liked the way it rolled off her tongue wasn’t relevant.

It was a long moment before the Mandalorian finally released her, and forcibly drew his hands away as he sat back. He shifted from a kneeling position to a cross-legged one while she stood. Sarah left him there, quickly collected the child she’d come to think of as hers, and adjusted the folds of his little brown robe. 

She fussed over Grogu as she inspected him, and confirmed her earlier impression; he was unharmed. Tired, exhausted even, but otherwise fine. She murmured softly to him as she tucked him away in his hammock, planted a kiss on his forehead for good measure, then shut the sleep chamber door to give him quiet and dark so he could rest. She turned to head back, and paused.

Din Djarin was exactly where she’d left him, seated in front of her blanket with fists planted on his thighs, head bowed, and shoulders drawn taut as if he strained against some great, invisible weight.

Concern rose anew, and she quickly sat back down in front of him.

“Din?”

“I don’t know if what I saw was real, or - Or not,” he began hoarsely. “It did not make  _ sense.” _

Getting the strong impression he was doubting something he subconsciously knew to be true, Sarah reached out and tentatively set her hand over one of his own. He did not move a muscle.

“Think about what you saw less, and more about what you  _ felt,” _ she suggested, queerly pleased to pull a lesson from Yoda’s shared wisdom so soon after it had been granted. It felt so perfectly suited to this situation that Sarah wondered if it was truly coincidence. “Your instincts are good. This was… Not a normal meditation.” A vast understatement. “I’ve never experienced something like this so terribly strong except in - In the recent dreams I’ve been attacked with. This was different, though. It was not a threat to me,” she added hastily, not wanting to rile him anew.

What if someone had attacked  _ him? _ Before the thought could spike into alarm, Din Djarin finally seemed to shake off his stupor and raised his head to look at her.

“I was told I spoke to  _ Tarre Viszla,” _ he announced hoarsely. He said it with such uncharacteristic passion that Sarah felt certain this was something very, very profound for him, yet she had no idea who that was or why they’d be significant. When he didn’t immediately continue, she gently prompted him.

“I don’t know who that is, Din. Why don’t you start from the beginning?”

At once she felt his reserve, and a deep seated fear that made the hair on the back of her neck stand up.

It also made Sarah abruptly realize that something had  _ changed. _ Maybe it was the lingering after-effects of going through an ordeal of such magnitude, but she was vaguely confused to realize she could sense her companion’s emotion far more strongly than she had been able to before, excepting the few times they had shared a direct telepathic connection. She wasn’t actively reaching for him anymore, so it made little sense. Perhaps it was that he was simply so shaken and under such duress that his emotions were running wild and unchecked, and she was so close she simply couldn’t help but take notice.

The theory made sense, but it didn’t feel like the right explanation. She decided to ignore it for now, and instead focused on trying to encourage him to open up.

“You are frightening me,” she admitted softly. That seemed to grab his attention.

“It was-- I didn’t-- '' he broke off, hesitant, then bowed his head again. When no further words came forth, Sarah decided it was time for a dramatic change of tact.

“I have an unusual request.”

He did not move except to look up at her. She considered that progress.

“Take this piece off. If you’re going to hold me, I don’t want to be wearing bruises afterwards.” She tapped the center of his breastplate, and stilled when his hand flashed up to snatch her wrist in a tight hold that quickly gentled. There was a new intensity to him, and Sarah began to despair of ever breaking through this difficult block. What in the universe had  _ happened  _ to him?

She had the sense he was struggling to find words, yet he didn’t immediately reject her proposal. Truly taking a great risk, Sarah slowly reached with her free hand and felt up the side of his chest, until she found the buckle hidden partway underneath the Beskar plating. She didn’t yet move to unlatch it, and waited to see what his final choice would be.

He bowed his head and something seemed to give. Trusting the feeling she didn’t quite understand and was certain came from her friend and not her own self, Sarah pulled her other hand free and divested him of the largest piece of his armor. She set it aside with great care, then turned and without further preamble plopped herself in Din’s lap. She quietly reveled in the closeness and the solid, firm support his body offered her as she fit herself against him. She shifted her weight to be more comfortable; his utility belt dug into her lower spine and hips, but it wasn’t unbearable.

At first he didn’t seem to know what to do, then his arms slowly circled her waist and pulled her closer. His chin came to rest on top of her head, a strange sensation of warm skin and the cold, hard ridge of the metal that framed it. Sarah closed her eyes and focused on sending calm, soothing sensations his way, as she had done before for Grogu on Tatooine.

After a time she felt the muscles at her back begin to relax, and his arms no longer held her quite so stiffly. She began to hum, a quiet lullaby tune her mother had often sang for her when she was distressed.

She wasn’t sure how long they stayed like that, but when he finally spoke again, his aura had turned into something far calmer and more comfortable to be immersed in.

“Tarre Vizsla is... Was. One of the great rulers of Mandalore, who claimed the throne after uniting our ancestors during a time of great strife. He is told of in many of our songs. She said--” he faltered for a moment, then continued, “--She said she was the first Mandalorian to become a Jedi. Who I spoke to, she claimed to be him.”

Sarah wanted to ask why he seemed confused about this historical figure’s gender, but knew it  _ really _ wasn’t the most important detail here to get caught up on. So instead she gave a slight nod that she knew he felt, and let him continue uninterrupted. She listened as he went on to describe his experience, of the ancient stone runes with the language of his people carved into them, of the armored woman who claimed to be a figure of historical magnitude, and the following conversation they had. She had the sense he was skipping details, and did not pry. Whatever he’d been through, it sounded like it had been intensely personal.

When he came to the part about a prophecy he faltered, and she felt his grip tighten around her. The vambraces covering his forearms dug uncomfortably into her stomach, but Sarah only had to lay a hand on his wrist and he relaxed his hold again. Quietly, he repeated what he remembered, and Sarah felt chills run down her spine.

“She didn’t actually  _ say _ that it was about me,” she pointed out, and swallowed thickly.

“She didn’t need to.”

“You’re not going to lose me,” she added softly, and hoped it was a promise she could keep. He didn’t answer, and Sarah sighed. “She put a lot on our shoulders,” she observed with a flash of anger at the woman she had not even met and who was long since dead. “But you’re also forgetting something important.”

“What’s that?” he asked, a hopeful tenure in his voice she found almost a little heartbreaking. He so desperately wanted comfort, needed assurance, and Sarah was still reeling so hard from seeing this vulnerable side of him that it took a moment to find her voice again.

“The fact that just because someone  _ says _ it’s a prophecy doesn’t mean it  _ is. _ And even if it is, who knows if it’s correct, or translated right, or where it came from and if pieces are missing, or whatever? It’s like the Tusken’s one. We learned some useful stuff. It doesn’t mean we need to upend our life and try to  _ make _ it become something. If it’s  _ really _ prophecy, then it shouldn’t matter whether we hear it or not, we’ll already end up doing it regardless.”

“...Are you saying we should  _ ignore _ it?” he asked, skeptical.

“No. I’m saying that it changes nothing of our current situation; we’re still taking care of Grogu and trying to find his kin so he can go home, and probably kick some bad guy’s butts on the way. If we happen to get entangled in some intergalactic political…. Thing? Well. We’ll face that when we get there. Let’s not go looking for trouble or lose our heads.”

Her breath hitched when his hold on her shifted, hands settled more comfortably against the side of her waist, just above her hips. He sighed, and she could feel the rise and fall of his chest through his padded vest. Suddenly badly flustered, Sarah felt at a loss on what to do next.

“I need to speak with the Forgemaster about this.”

“That sounds like a good plan. Is she an elder or something? There’s a lot of cultures that bring their visionary experiences to be interpreted by someone else.”

“She is one of the lore keepers of the tribe, among other responsibilities.”

“Din Djarin?” she prompted quietly. He shifted, turned his head a little.

“Hm?”

“I hate to break up this moment, but I  _ really _ need to use the bathroom.”

He  _ huffed _ at her. Huffed!

~*~

Din Djarin reluctantly let go of the woman in his lap so she could free herself to take care of necessities. After replacing his armor, he removed himself to the upper levels of the ship to grant her privacy and collect his thoughts. When she called him back down, he found her crouched down on the floor to pick something up, skirt pooled around her legs.

“What’s this?” she asked, sounding perplexed. “Isn’t this Beskar…?”

He had a sense of foreboding even before he walked to her side and Sarah had turned, her hand held out to show him a single, perfect whorl of raw ore marred only on one rough patch where it’d been separated from its original formation. For a moment, it felt like his entire world was skewed sideways, slipping away from his grasp. It gave him the unpleasant sense of free falling, even though his feet remained firmly planted beneath him.

Gloved fingers gingerly plucked it up from her palm. He felt the weight of it, throat constricted. It was several moments before he found his voice again to speak.

“This was given to me in the dream.” Calling it a vision felt too esoteric. “It’s Beskar,” he confirmed.

Sarah’s eyes widened, and he had the sense she was both awe-struck and concerned. He did an abrupt double-take at the realization, because there was little in her expression to hint at the latter. Scrutinizing her, he wondered what had prompted the hunch.

“Speaking of - the beskar I bought at the market. That’s for you, in case it wasn’t obvious.”

“I’ll reimburse what you spent on it,” he offered, and yet it didn’t feel like enough. “We can work something out.”

She scoffed and crossed her arms, then raised an eyebrow at him. With the flattering sweep of her dress’s neckline, the gesture unintentionally drew attention to her slight cleavage, a fact he didn’t feel inclined to tell her about as he carefully averted his gaze back to her face.

“It’s a  _ gift, _ not a trade. Call it a thank you for saving my life when we first met if it makes you feel better.”

More touched than he was willing to put into words, yet also feeling stymied at her refusal, he silently accepted her generosity with a short nod. He wondered what the Forgemaster would think of her when he introduced them, if the Mandalorian smith would find Sarah a welcome ally or begrudge her the place he had granted her in his clan.

Something to worry about at a later time.

He rolled the Beskar nugget around between his palm and thumb, then found a pocket on his belt to safely stash it away.

“Food time?” Sarah suggested as she smoothed her skirt.

He walked past her to the cabinet and unlocked it with the press of a button. In short order he collected two of their soup cans and some spoons, then passed one off to her on his way to the ladder. They didn’t share anymore conversation, and the silence was companionable even as he left her behind.

In the storage room across from the cockpit, safely secured behind the blast doors, Din pulled his helmet off. The rush of open air against his face was a welcome relief, and he picked up a rag off his bench to wipe away the sweat. His uniform creaked as he took a seat on the sturdy metal slab and popped open the lid to his can.

Din swore softly when a tiny octopus immediately burst out of it in a flailing tangle of tentacles, and grabbed it by the bulbous head. Crushed dead between his fingers, it went limp. A good portion of his soup had sloshed over the rim of his cup and dribbled down the side.

He mopped up the mess with his rag and set the food aside, appetite lost. He hated seafood, though he’d eaten worse than this. Knowing he would be consuming it anyways because he couldn’t afford the waste or to skip a meal, he let himself put it off as he leaned back against the wall and shut his eyes.

It had been a  _ long _ day. He was looking forward to going to bed and hopefully waking up to news from his contact about the Mandalorian covert, and he wondered what sort of guide he’d be introduced to. He wasn’t sure how reliable his source was - the mechanic on Tatooine may have vouched for it being on good authority, but she’d also saddled him with a civilian who posed a risk to himself and those he protected, after cleverly managing to twist his arm. He had hoped the frog lady’s husband would have been able to give him more direct information, though he couldn’t say he was surprised at being given the run-around. He just hoped it didn’t all amount to nothing.

The rain still pounded away outside, and he’d seen the violence of the storm through his glance out the cockpit windows. Sheets of rain that dropped visibility down to a matter of feet and turned the world outside into an endless haze of white-washed gray.

He was glad they didn’t have to be outside in it, at least not yet. It wasn’t a problem for him with his insulated armor padding, only largely inconvenient, but he didn’t want Sarah or Grogu to catch something in the inclimate weather.

Mind made up, he decided to use the downtime while they had it. It was time to hit the markets, and he’d gathered during their walk back to the ship that business here didn’t stop for the weather. The locals probably loved it.

With a grimace, he dutifully got through his dinner until he heard the spoon scrape the bottom of the can, and then all that was left was the dead octopus. Din ran a hand once over his hair to smooth it back, and noted that he’d need to buzz it soon. It had grown out far longer than he liked, not having had time to focus on this detail of personal grooming since he first acquired Grogu into his care.

That seemed like so long ago. Had it really only been a matter of months?

He collected his helmet and put it on, then keyed open the blast doors and dropped down the hatch to the lower level. He was surprised to find Grogu awake and active; the kid toddled about on the floor, chasing after an empty can Sarah rolled for him.

“Here, kid.” He crouched down to offer the child his leftovers, and couldn’t help a smile at the happy squeal he got for his consideration. Satisfied both at Grogu’s delight over the dead octopus and the fact he wouldn’t have to eat it himself, he turned away to find Sarah watching him with furrowed brows.

“What’s wrong?” he asked and stood.

“...I’m not sure if something is,” she hedged. He waited to see if she’d continue, and held still as she took a tentative step towards him. “It’s just… Normally, I can get a general sense of the mood of people around me. Without trying to, it’s not a mind trick,” she added quickly, her words starting to tumble out as her hands gestured in the air. He recognized her distress and stepped forward to briefly place a hand on her arm. The contact seemed to calm her some.

“And you can’t now?” he guessed, and wondered how much she’d sensed from him in the past. Perhaps he wasn’t as hidden behind his armor as he thought he was.

“No, I can sense way more. I can’t  _ stop,” _ she explained. “It’s like - It’s like I’m still connected to you. When we shared thoughts.”

Understandably alarmed, he tried to figure out if he could feel her presence on the edges of his mind. There was none of the tell-tale pressure that marked her intrusion.

“...You can hear my thoughts?”

“No. Just… Just kinda sense your mood. More than I should.”

Both of them looked down as Grogu burbled at them with a sharp chirp at the end, and Din Djarin wondered just what it was the kid might have done to them. He knelt to scoop the child up when Grogu made graspy-hands at him, and Sarah watched with furrowed brows and flushed cheeks.

“It’s probably because of what we did.” It was the logical explanation. “Might wear off?”

“I don’t know. I’m not trying to, I swear.”

“Sarah.” He thought he knew why this so distressed her.

“Yes?”

“It doesn’t bother me.” That wasn’t  _ entirely _ accurate, but it was genuinely meant. It did make him uncomfortable, the idea of someone seeing past his purposefully closed-off show of expression, but he found he didn’t mind so much if it was her. They’d already shared far more intimate details than this, and he had faith in her ability to manage this added layer of communication. If anything, it may prove useful to them.

It felt rather like sharing a secret.

“It doesn’t..?”

“No.”

“You feel tense.”

“I  _ am  _ tense. A lot has happened. What about the kid? You feel anything different with him?”

Sarah dropped her gaze to the child. As if she couldn’t help herself, a smile formed on her lips and softened the worry etched into her features. He liked that.

“I don’t think so.”

She startled when he stepped forward and pushed Grogu into her arms, and he was pleased to see the last vestige of her distress chased away.

“I’m going out. Stay on the ship.”

“Where are you going?”

“Shopping.”

She brightened considerably, and adjusted Grogu in her arms as the kid started to play with her necklace. He put one of the bone knuckles it was strung with in his mouth, and Sarah gently tugged it free with a soft reprimand before she looked back to Din.

“Do you think you’ll be gone long?”

“Might be a few hours, I don’t know how long it will take to find what we need. If I run into trouble I’ll let you know. I’ll bring a comm link with, you can use the one built into the cockpit.”

“Red switch by the disc thingy on the left, right? Er, I mean, correct?”

“Correct.”

Grogu made a short, chirped warble at him and extended a hand. Din reached out to put his finger to the tiny palm, a slight smile hidden behind his helmet.

“Be good,” he ordered, and with nothing else to say, took his leave.

He stopped outside beneath the wing of the Razor Crest and watched the ramp retract, and gained his last glimpse at the two of them; Sarah with Grogu in her arms, both of them watching him depart as she checked the seat of her gun in its holster and loosed its restraining strap. Satisfied, he went off to see what he could find for better clothes.

As it happened, he was surprised to find the answer was ‘a lot.’ It didn’t take him long to gain directions to a store that sold a selection of gear made to withstand extreme weather conditions, though the majority of what they had on stock wasn’t made for a human’s form, let alone for Sarah’s petite size. In the end he settled for an insulated, water-proofed jacket with a hood that had the added bonus of thin armor plating on the upper arms and back. It wasn’t the best quality, but it would have to do.

He picked up a few other items including an oilskin cloak, paid for his goods, and left with them wrapped in the cloak.

When he turned off the street, he knew he was being followed.

Taking a different route than the one he had used to get here, he considered his options. The rain still fell in sheets around him and he primarily relied on his visor display to tell him who was nearby. He could simply jetpack away, but the lack of visibility would be a hazard both in the air and when it came time to land. It also wouldn’t really solve his problem, just put it off. Deciding that it was better to find out who was pursuing him and why, he simply waited for them to make the first move.

It didn’t take long.

When he intentionally stepped off the main thoroughfare into a more isolated stretch of winding, narrow lanes, four figures on his display cut around the block and took up position at the end of the first short alley. He knew at least two were behind him.

“Been seein’ a lot of your kind lurkin’ around here lately.”

He stopped in his tracks and turned to face the wet, gravelly voice. He couldn’t discern their species, unable to properly see through the rain and having only the red-orange silhouette of their heat signature to go off of. An answer didn’t seem to be required, as his mysterious quarry continued right on talking. “Causin’ a lotta problems in th’ port. Bad for business. Got a message for yer leader, and yer gonna bring it to ‘em.”

“What’s the message?”

The figure laughed, and Din Djarin ducked down as he caught the movement of a figure who lifted a gun to take aim. The bolt sizzled and popped as it flashed through the heavy rain, and disintegrated in a puff of steam mid-air somewhere behind him. With the space now doubly choked for visibility, he made use of the advantage his gear granted.

The speaker he ignored for now in favor of the two gunmen that flanked him. He appeared behind the first and wrapped a short length of his grappling cable around their fleshy, tentacle draped neck, then hauled on it until he heard bone snap. He let the weight of the corpse drop forward and side-stepped to keep himself a mobile target. The other one whirled and fumbled his shot as their lead man cursed. He now knew what species some of them were, at least - Quarren. 

He  _ hated _ seafood.

“Rush him!”

It was hot, sweaty work even in the cold rain. The figure who had addressed him was already running, and more heat signatures showed up on his display at the mouth of each side of the alleyway. He lifted his arm and shot the grappling line out to wrap around the runner’s legs with a sharp jerk of his wrist, then yanked for good measure. The stranger fell hard with a scream, thrashed in his panic, and Din Djarin disconnected the line. He had to duck for cover behind a large air duct as one side opened fire.

They’d picked a wretchedly bad time to cross his path, perhaps not expecting the advantage he’d have in his equipment. The deadly, brilliant flashes of light hissed and sizzled into thin air in the heavy downpour, and dramatically cut down the range of fire they had on their blasters.

It was a disadvantage he shared, but unlike his adversaries, Din Djarin had no qualms about getting up close and personal. As three of the figures were ordered into the alley to pursue him by their tangled up leader, he quietly stepped out into the open.

Their shots went wild as he paced along the side of the wall, clearly fired at random in the hopes it’d catch him. He drew abreast of them quickly as they kept walking forward, and once they were a step beyond him, he whirled and grabbed the head of the nearest one. He didn’t try to snap the Quarren’s neck - his skin was too slippery to guarantee a reliable hold - and instead cocked his other elbow and slammed the stranger’s face into it. It was a fifty-fifty chance if they were dead or not, but they were definitely out cold even as he threw them forward into the middle gunner and turned his attention to the third.

He grabbed the wrist of the arm that held their gun and ignored the blaster shot which rang sharp and metallic against his breastplate. The cephalopod cried out when his arm was twisted and bone snapped, and Din sent a brutal punch square in his face. He felt the crunch and snap of the soft cartilage caving in, and reassessed his assumption about the first guy - they were both definitely very dead.

In the haze of steam and violent wash of rain, the third gunner screamed and tried to run. The other end of the alley opened fire over the sounds of their leader’s whimperings, and Din roughly grabbed the run-away Quarren by the back of his shirt and hauled him around into the line of fire. After the first volly ended he simply let the body drop, and walked calmly to the side. A braver soul than the opponents he’d faced so far came running down towards him, and barked something out in his native language. Din intercepted him just as the stranger got within arm’s reach of his struggling leader.

The Quarren quickly lost his life in a moment of inattention as he went to use a comm link to call for backup. Din Djarin couldn’t be sure if the message had gotten through or not, but figured it was safe to assume it had.

He shoved the corpse forward to flop over the lifeform still tangled up and struggling on the ground to further trap him. As he burst into hysterical screams, Din Djarin fired his secondary grappling cable up at an upper story of the building and used it to gain distance between himself and his adversaries. There were twelve of them choking the alley now, and it wouldn’t be long before they realized he’d temporarily ditched.

Not willing to make the same mistake his recently slain opponent had, he detached the cable from the wall and let it retract back into the vambrace, and thoroughly checked his environment before he finally risked the brief moment it took to radio Sarah.

“Sarah. Engage ground security protocol, I’ve hit trouble.”

He didn’t wait for her to answer and dropped back down into the fight, just as the first blaster bolt shot at his vantage point. Most of the Quarren were armed only with pistols or simple knives, yet there were a few he could tell were better equipped, with goggles to let them track his heat signature. He knew little of the Quarren species, but he did know the rumors that they had finely tuned senses that benefitted them in this sort of environment. Scent, taste, some kind of sixth sense, whatever it was - it clearly didn’t benefit them enough.

Moving around got much harder with someone able to direct the group where to shoot, and it wasn’t an advantage he planned to let them enjoy for long.

Abandoning stealth, he drew his knife and charged at the first two individuals. A heavy booted kick sent the first one backwards, hunched over and vomiting as they struggled to keep hold on their gun. Din Djarin grabbed their partner by the tentacles that dangled off his chin, gutted him with his knife, then whirled and threw him into another Quarren who had rushed at them, armed only with a small blade.

“N-no, wait, plea--” The hunched over one’s cries were cut off as Din grabbed his head and brought it down onto his knee as he jerked it up. He was already moving away before the corpse thudded heavily on the ground, and grabbed the arm that brought a knife swinging down at his neck.

“I’ll  _ kill _ you!” the stranger cried, furious.

He didn’t. His body joined the growing death count with a cutoff scream. 

“Guess not,” Din replied, and shoved the body away as he pulled his own blade free of the Quarren’s stomach. After that, a momentary pause seemed to take hold of the combatants as several of the gathered figures seemed to hesitate. A few stepped back, and Din wondered if they were ready to give up or if something else was about to happen. He ducked behind cover just in case, then seized the moment to radio Sarah again, worried at the fact he hadn’t yet heard a response.

“Come in, Sarah.”

Nothing. And he had no time to try again, because six of the remaining adversaries were running towards him. He clenched his jaw and readied himself, then waited for the right moment.  _ ‘I don’t have time for this,’ _ he thought grimly.

He swung out as the group drew abreast of his hiding spot, and felt blaster bolts glance off his armor as he went straight for the goggled Quarren directing them. They had a brief scuffle, and he felt someone try to grab at him even as he turned the fighter around with a violent punch they tried to sidestep, and ended up awkwardly exposing their back to him. The Quarren was too tall for him to comfortably reach his exposed neck, and had armor plating protecting his back, so Din crouched down and slashed at the back of his knee. With his tendon severed the enemy dropped down with a cry, and Din Djarin finished him off by burying his knife to the hilt in the fleshy neck.

As he did, he lifted his other arm just when the barrel of a gun was shoved into his face, held by a shaking hand.

“W-We’ve got you pin--”

They didn’t get a chance to finish their sentence. Din flexed his left wrist, heard the click of his vambrace’s mechanical insides whir to life, and then suddenly there was chaos around him as five whistling birds launched into the air. The glowing blue heads of each small projectile flashed eerily in the heavy rainfall, and briefly illuminated the terrified faces of his foes before the bodies dropped around him near simultaneously. With each successful strike, a small notice sounded in his headset.

_ Dingdingdingdingding! _

He stood and watched on his display as the remaining few opponents took a step back on the other end of the walkway, then scattered and fled as cowards.

There was murder in every step of his purposeful stride as he walked straight for the stranger he’d left alive and cowering on the ground during the fight. The lifeform had finally managed to throw the weight of the corpse off of him, and was nearly free of the tangle of metal cable around his bleeding legs when Din approached.

“P-Please don’t kill me, please, I’ve - I’ve got family back at home.” He was large and rotund, and now that Din was within arm’s reach of him, he could tell the guy wasn’t Quarren. With a pair of bulbous eye-stalks on the side of his triangular head, a flat-toothed mouth on the forehead, and a clustered beard of short tentacles, he could only be an Ongree. A very  _ fat _ Ongree. Din Djarin crouched in front of him, and casually put the tip of his blaster underneath the stranger’s chin.

His quarry panicked, gasping in great, hitched gulps for air as he scrambled back until he was slammed against the ground, hands held up in surrender.

“Tell me who sent you, and why.”

“I cannot say!” the Ongree cried, desperate. “My - My family runs a blackmarket trade in the p-p-port town, you Mandos have been - Have been bad for business. If they know I talked, they’ll kill them, please.”

He let the creature hear the soft clink of the weapon as Din tightened his grip on the trigger, and dug the barrel painfully deep into his neck.

“Q-Quar, Quar Ka’tara s-sent me, he’s angry, angry about the stolen shipments a-and he’s been driving up the fees for e-everyone else!” the Ongree cried, shrill. “Please, I swear, that’s all I know. I just wanted to keep my family safe.” The Ongree’s eyes clenched shut as their stalks shrunk down into his head.

“You should have thought about that before you picked a fight.”

Just as he was about to squeeze the trigger, the Ongree snickered once, then began shaking with hysterical laughter. It was dramatic enough a break of character that Din Djarin gave pause, and a chill ran down his spine along with a sense of foreboding.

“Y-You shouldn’t have left yours unprotected!”

Din Djarin didn’t wait to hear more. He pulled the trigger and left the corpse behind, then ran down the narrow lane until he was in an open enough space he could take the step-up into the air. His jetpack hoisted him with a lurch, and the ground vanished from view as he was plunged into a formless world of endless, whitewashed gray.

It was chillingly similar to his recent experience in the dark abyss, except far noisier. And wetter.

He hit the comm link’s broadcast button, sheltered under his hand from the rain as best as he could.

“Trouble inbound. Tell me you and the kid are alright, Sarah.”

Radio silence.

“Sarah! Come in, Sarah,” he barked, fist clenched.

Nothing.

~*~

Sarah’s first clue something was wrong came when Grogu let out a sudden squeal of alarm where he sat playing with his toys. He stumbled up to his little feet and pelted towards her even as he nearly tripped over his robe. She picked him up and bounced him lightly in her arms, perplexed.

“What’s wrong, little guy?” she asked, just as a chill ran down her spine. Before she could question the sudden sense of foreboding, she heard Din Djarin’s muffled voice sound from the cockpit.

_ “Sarah. Engage ground security protocol, I’ve hit trouble.” _

Alarmed, she started for the ladder.

Her fingers had just touched against cool metal when she heard a soft  _ click _ from behind, muffled by the heavy rain, which wasn’t part of the ship’s usual idle noises. Barely understanding what drove her, she turned away from the ladder and instead thrust Grogu into his sleeping chamber, then smashed her fist on the controls to shut the door just as all hell broke loose.

An explosion rocked the ship from side to side beneath her feet, and sparks flew into the air as a detonation charge planted on the back hatch blew a hole in the far end of the ship. Shrapnel bounced off the walls and skittered over the ground, and she felt a few small stings as tiny bits of sharp metal struck her body. Smoke billowed into the space as Sarah drew her gun, heart lodged in her throat, and barely had time to appreciate her luck over not being shredded alive or impaled by a larger fragment.

There was no good way to take cover in the single long room of the Razor Crest’s hull, nowhere she could hide, and nothing between whoever was coming and Grogu but her.

Suspecting they’d be assuming her to be standing, she dropped to one knee and waited.

The first figure clambered up into the entry, and the moment she saw the dark shadow through the haze she opened fire with two successive blasts. They fell right back off with a cry.

“She’s armed! Get in there and take her out, get the kid,” someone ordered in a rough, commanding voice.

Sarah realized that if she stayed put and let the fight come to her, she was as good as dead.

So she didn’t. She darted to the side of the room and ran down it as she tried not to think about the blaster bolts that ripped into the air in a seconds-long hail of heavy fire. She plastered herself against the wall with her heart hammering, and held still.

“Did you get her?”

“Think so. Go check it out.”

Someone climbed on board, and a Quarren came into view through the smog, a heavy repeating blaster rifle held in his arms.

He pivoted on a heel and raised his weapon at the sound of Din Djarin’s voice sounding on the comm link again, distant and distorted.

_ “Come in, Sarah.” _

The stranger noticed her just as Sarah took aim while his gun was pointed elsewhere. His body hit the metal floor with a resounding thud that sent whoever was outside into a tizzy of motion, and she had an idea.

She holstered her blaster as she threw herself forward and rolled over the ground, inordinately grateful for Din Djarin’s recent lessons. She knew how to move fast enough to get herself where she needed to be, just as blaster fire ripped into the air above her head.

One of the shots came close enough that it singed the hair on her head, even as her hands closed around the rifle and yanked it from the stranger’s limp fingers.

She shoved the corpse up as a paltry defense and put her belly to the floor as flat as she could make herself, then settled the rifle over the Quarren’s back. She didn’t wait to see anyone enter this time, just pulled the trigger and held it down, and cocked her wrists to bring its repeating fire in a sweep back and forth across the entry.

Male voices cried out, and then there was a pause.

Something hard and metallic suddenly clinked and bounced against the floor and rolled towards her, and she came face to face with death as a round, silver grenade came into view.

Panic spiked anew, hot and fresh and shattering, and she reacted without thinking.

Sarah thrust a hand out and felt the rising crescendo of the Force rush through her as it heeded her desperate, instinct-driven call, and the bomb skated and skipped backwards over the floor, vanished from sight. A moment later it exploded, and illuminated the scene outside through the haze, bright and harsh. She settled herself back down with sweat dripping down her neck and hair stuck to her face in an uncomfortable way, bile in her throat as she waited. She struggled to calm her shaking hands, and adjusted her grip on the stolen weapon.

When blaster fire opened up, Sarah scrunched her head down before she realized that no one was shooting at her. Shouts and screams filled the air outside, and she recognized the  _ whoosh _ of small engines roaring just slightly louder than the storm.

And then, nothing for several long, grueling moments.

Someone knocked on the side of the hull. Sarah jolted and snapped her face up to take aim, a sharp breath sucked in through clenched teeth.

“We’re friendlies, don’t shoot,” a woman’s voice announced, clear and crisp.

“Step on this ship and you’re dead,” Sarah warned, not convinced. “Who are you?”

“Allies. Your companion is looking for us.”

Sarah clenched her jaw. From the noises she’d heard she could gather that they’d cleaned up whoever remained outside, and if what the stranger said was true, this was another Mandalorian who addressed her.

“Alright. You can enter - Just you. Unarmed. If I see a weapon, I shoot. Got it? And don’t think I don’t know about the tricks you guys have in your wrist things.”

“Very well. Marrek, take this.”

Sarah shifted her position to be more comfortable as she waited in tense silence. A bead of sweat rolled down the side of her face and caught on the corner of her eye, and it stung. She ignored it. She couldn’t hear the sounds of the woman disarming herself, if she indeed was doing so, but she did hear the sound of her grabbing the edge of the ship and hauling herself up into it. Boots clicked on the floor with a strangely metallic weight to them, and she got her first look at the Mandalorian.

She was divested of any sign of weaponry, though Sarah wasn’t convinced there wasn’t still  _ something _ hidden on her person. Her forearms were bare cloth and if she owned a belt, it had been removed.

At least, she assumed the woman was a Mandalorian - her armor was of a recognizable style, yet different from Din Djarin’s. It was much lighter, feminine and sleek in design, and decorated by faded paint in a riot of colors. It was fitted over a padded long-sleeved top in blocks of black and gray fabric, the shirt tucked into nearly beige pants that lacked any thigh protection. Her boots and knees were covered by simple plating.

Old marks from previous battles decorated the colorful metal’s surface, and though it almost had the appearance of something rather junky, Sarah wasn’t fooled.

She recognized the disturbingly undented surface and the sheen of Beskar metal beneath the crazy, faded paint job and scorch marks.

The woman walked with a sure stride until she stopped some six feet away from Sarah, and looked around the room as if unconcerned by her presence in it.

“Who are you?” Sarah demanded. The helmet turned her way, difficult to look at with how eerily similar it was to Din’s in style with a dark T visor, and then Sarah was quietly scandalized when the woman reached up and pulled her helmet off. Her stylishly cut hair was just as colorful as her armor.

“I am Sabine Wren, leader of Clan Wren. And you?”

Sarah marginally relaxed her hold on the gun in her hands, and lifted her finger off the trigger.

“Sarah. Clan Mudhorn,” she added after a moment, and watched the stranger with distrust. 

“You’re Mandalorian?” the stranger asked, openly surprised.

“Not exactly. Long story.”

“Indeed. I look forward to hearing it. Where’s your friend?”

Sarah opened her mouth to reply, and was interrupted by Din Djarin’s uncanny timing.

_ “Trouble inbound. Tell me you and the kid are alright, Sarah. Sarah! Come in, Sarah,”  _ he barked.

Sabine looked mildly amused, and Sarah finally relaxed.

“I’ll be right back. Don’t touch anything,” she ordered, and stood. It was a relief to get off the dead Quarren, though she suspected the stench of his oily, fish-smelling skin wasn’t going to wash out of her clothes anytime soon. She kept half an eye turned to the woman as she made her way to the other end of the room, and collected Grogu from his hiding spot. Keenly aware of the woman’s following gaze, Sarah awkwardly scurried up into the cockpit with both her stolen gun and the child.

She flicked the switch for the cockpit’s radio then leaned forward, and hoped this would work.

“Mando, we’re alright. We’ve got guests - Mandalorians.”

A pause, and then she heard his voice again. It was difficult to hear him - something loud and whooshing filled the line with static she suspected was the sound of his jetpack along with the rain.

_ “I’m on my way.” _ His relief was palpable, and Sarah let out a heavy sigh.

In short order she returned to the trashed lower level, and sent a glance around at the mess. It was going to take some time to fix the place up.

Sabine hadn’t moved, or if she’d had she’d put herself back in place, and Sarah walked over and stopped a few feet away. She laid the rifle she’d stolen over her shoulder to ease some of the weight of it off her arm, and the two simply stared at each other for several moments.

“You have courage,” the woman stated. Sarah had a feeling it was more of a compliment than it might be coming from someone else.

“I have a purpose. Um, so… I thought Mandalorians didn’t take off their helmet?”

Sabine raised her brows, and though Sarah had the impression the woman was caught off guard by the question, she also didn’t seem overly surprised by it.

“Most of us do, generally not around outsiders. There are different… Sects.”

“Oh. By the way - Um. Thanks. I’m pretty sure we would have been toast if you hadn’t shown up when you did.”

“We’ve been keeping an eye on you since you arrived,” Sabine revealed, and a curious expression filled her eyes as she looked Sarah up and down. “It was… Difficult.”

_ ‘Uh oh,’ _ Sarah thought, and adjusted Grogu in her arms.

“We’re pretty good at--” she cut herself off at the sound of what she now recognized as a jetpack drawing near, and ran past Sabine to the charred and twisted end of the ship. The rain was still coming down in a violent wash of white, and she could just make out the dull, dark gray shadows of several figures hanging out around them and the obscured corpses on the ground. “Mando!” she cried in greeting, and watched as he came into view. He landed awkwardly, stumbling on his feet and nearly fell forward as if he wasn’t well practiced with the maneuver or was injured. She quickly decided it was the former when he straightened and walked straight for them, not sparing their guests a glance.

Sabine watched silently from behind as Din Djarin jumped up into the ship and checked on them. His wet hand came up to gently touch Grogu’s ear before he lifted his helmeted head to look past her, and froze.

Sarah felt his immediate spike of disbelief, anger, and alarm, and then suddenly she was grabbed and shoved behind him as he herded her between him and the wall of the ship.

“You’re not Mandalorian,” he accused, sharp and demanding, a hand on the grip of his holstered pistol.

“I am Sabine Wren of Clan Wren.” As the silence stretched, she continued; “House Vizsla - I was born on Mandalore,” the woman patiently explained, helmet tucked underneath an arm as she regarded him. Sarah glanced out the ship at the sound of the woman’s armored escorts drawing closer, and heard the click of guns. She tightened her grip on the rifle in her hands, and hoped they weren’t about to start another fight.

“You don’t follow the Creed.”

“I do not follow  _ your _ creed. That doesn’t make me any less a part of the  _ Mando’ade.”  _ Sabine nodded behind them, and Sarah caught Din Djarin’s glance as his helmet turned to look at the figures now flanking them to the right. “We aren’t here to pick a fight; it seems your clanmate was in a bit of a tight spot.”

“She’s right,” Sarah quietly confirmed. “I wasn’t going to hold out much longer, they had explosives.”

“You didn’t leave us much to clean up,” Sabine revealed, and smiled lopsidedly at her. Finally, the tension in the room seemed to give, and Din Djarin relaxed his protective stance. Slightly. Sarah breathed a sigh of relief, and Grogu burbled quietly.

“So… Are we all going to just stand out here in the rain or can we come in? I’ve got fish swimming in my boots,” a male voice broke into their conversation. He had a melodic, charming tone Sarah instantly liked.

“I think we should relocate to a safer space to converse. The Dockyard isn’t very welcoming to us,” Sabine said in a wry tone. “May I arm myself, now?” she asked as she turned to fix Sarah with a penetrating gaze.

“Of course.”

Sarah stepped out of the way of Din Djarin’s sheltering bulk to better watch as another Mandalorian came into view and set down a pile of gear. Sabine knelt down to collect slim, mismatched vambraces, her belt strung with both pouches and what Sarah suspected were detonation charges, two knives, and three different guns.

As the knives were hidden away on her person, Sarah wondered if maybe the woman had honored her word and completely divested herself of weaponry. Then again, the woman herself was probably a weapon.

She’d been right to be cautious.

Mild indignation flashed as Din stepped in front of her again, and partially blocked both herself and Grogu from view as the other stranger hauled himself up into the ship.

“Sooooo we riding along in this thing or are you gonna make us fly in the rain? Because I gotta tell you, I’m so sick of the weather here,” the man announced, and shook his fingerless-gloved hands off for good measure. He had a light, airy presence to him that was easy to be disarmed by.

“Where are you suggesting we go?” Din asked, not looking away from the brilliantly orange-and-white armored figure Sarah could only peek at.

“Where else? The covert. We’ve a landing space in the Mahra’jii foothills, you can make repairs on your ship there and be offered better security. I’d be grateful if you’d allow us on board, it’s a long flight home.

Sarah waited as her Mandalorian protector seemed to deliberate for several long moments, then finally nodded his head.

“Open the side door,” he ordered her, and Sarah trotted off to comply. “One of you get rid of the squid. I’ll drop the netting so we don’t lose everyone on takeoff,” he explained shortly, and beckoned the two Mandalorians to follow.

The cheery fellow set right to dragging the corpse off, and Sabine helped Din draw down and secure a broad-strapped net from the ceiling that split the long belly of the ship into two sections.

By the time Sarah hit the controls to open the Razor Crest’s side entrance ramp, six other Mandalorians had gathered outside it in various colors of armor that were both fascinating to look at, and rather intimidating to behold. 

She had  _ so _ many questions.

“Get up top,” Din ordered her before Sarah could voice anything to the men who began filing onto the ship, and she complied with only a backwards glance.

Seated up in the cockpit in her customary spot in the right-hand chair, Sarah restrained herself from peppering her friend with questions when he finally joined her. It wasn’t until he’d finished checking the ship’s status that he turned in the pilot’s seat to look at them both. Grogu had taken to playing with her necklace, and stopped to meet Din’s gaze with a quiet, pleased coo.

“Are you both alright?” Din asked, a slight hoarseness to his voice. Sarah smiled to reassure him.

“Yes. Grogu was kept out of the fight entirely. I didn’t get hit, just scuffed up.”

“You did good. New gun?”

“Stole it off the Quarren.”

He regarded her in silence for a moment, then simply nodded and turned back to the controls. Sarah pivoted her seat at the sound of someone clambering up the ladderwell, and watched as Sabine joined them in the cockpit.

“Nice ship,” the woman complimented as she plopped herself down in the remaining seat, then set her helmet on her lap. “So, what’s with the wrinkly baby?”

“He’s a Foundling,” Din explained, which snagged Sarah’s curiosity. “I’ve been tasked with returning him to his kind. I came here hoping you might know something.”

“Probably not; I’ve never seen his species before in my life, but someone at the Covert might know something.”

Sarah glanced over at Din as she felt the shift in his mood, and imagined his shoulders were drawn up tight and tensed. She didn’t get long to speculate on it before she was suddenly under Sabine’s scrutiny.

“I like you,” the woman declared abruptly, and grinned at her. “Don’t find too many ladies nowadays outside of our family who know how to sling a gun. So, what’s the little guy’s name? He’s kinda cute,” she added, and leaned forward. The child in question stopped watching Din to look at her, ears raised.

“His name is Grogu,” Sarah supplied. She felt the ship lurch beneath them as they lifted off into the air, and then Sabine stood to give Din directions.

“North by north-east, let’s make sure we’re not being followed first.”

As silence returned to the cockpit, Sara fidgeted.

“Does the decoration mean anything, or is it just for looks?” she asked finally as she eyed Sabine’s colorful equipment. She either had incredibly eclectic tastes - there were stripes, checkerboarding, and seemingly random designs - or was very storied. Maybe both.

“Mostly just decoration. I like doing art. How about you? Any hobbies besides keeping the silent bucket over there company?”

“I do crafts, drawing when I get the chance. Lately, I mostly just take care of Grogu.”

“How long have you had him?”

“Not terribly long.”

Sarah jumped when she heard the first notes of music ring out from below, loud enough it cut through the roar of the Razor Crest’s engines and the rush of wind outside that the open hull no longer sealed out. After what sounded like a test run, there was abruptly music flooding the ship, a spicy jig on some string instrument.

Sabine’s lopsided smile returned.

“Marrek. He’s a bard, likes to keep the mood light.”

“I can’t believe he brought an instrument with him to a fight,” Sarah said, bemused.

“It’s a  _ Woor Bes’bev,” _ Sabine explained, then elaborated at Sarah’s clueless expression. “A type of instrument that’s been weaponized. Flutes are more common, but Marrek has an inventive streak. He’d be happy to show it off to you when we land, I’m certain.”

“We don’t have time to play around. We’ll need to leave as soon as we find out what we need to know,” Din Djarin cut in, and Sarah couldn’t help but feel her heart sink. 

“I think you’ll find reason enough to stay, at least for a time. You’re being hunted, yeah? It will take time to repair your ship, and I can guarantee you won’t find a safer place here to hang out to do that. Look at what’s already happened,” Sabine calmly pointed out. “These two would benefit from the extra security.”

He sighed, and Sarah couldn’t help a tiny smile. Silence stretched until Sabine broke it.

“So... You’re clanmates, and yet - She claims to be  _ auretii.” _

_ “Auretii?” _ Sarah repeated, perplexed.

“Outsider. In other contexts, traitor,” Sabine clarified.

“She’s not sworn to the Creed, but she is as family,” Din Djarin explained stiffly.

“We could change that,” Sabine offered.

“That is her choice to make.”

“Why does everyone we meet want to adopt me into their tribe?” Sarah exclaimed in exasperation. “First the Tuskens, now these guys, and I’ve already dodged a million before I even met you!”

“They knew a good thing when they saw it,” Sabine answered, and Din Djarin scoffed. “And it looks like  _ someone _ finally managed to keep you,” she added with a wink that had Sarah blushing.

“No one is  _ keeping _ me,” she quipped.

“You’ve already been adopted,” Sabine pointed out.

“He is  _ not _ my dad!” Sarah spluttered, mortified.

“I didn’t say that’s what he was,” the woman replied with a cheeky smirk. Sarah almost didn’t catch Din Djarin’s beleaguered sigh over the sound of their bickering and the music. “Though I  _ am _ curious - The Tuskens tried to make you one of them? How did  _ that _ come about?”

“Uh…” Sarah shifted her weight and turned her attention down to a fidgety Grogu.

“She draws too much attention,” Din commented dryly.

“No kidding. Hey - See those rocks up there? Turn westwards once you pass them and lower elevation by three hundred feet. We’ll be flying under radar until we’re clear of the occupied spaces and can make for home. Lords, I’m starving. I can’t wait to eat.”

“No, Grogu, stay put,” Sarah ordered, distracted entirely from conversation now as she hauled the squirming child back onto her lap, and held him more securely. He squealed a protest and reached for Din Djarin with both hands. When she kept him in place, Grogu glowered up at her with squinted eyes and a pout. “He’s busy, kiddo. You can hang out with your adoptive daddy later.”

A pleasant, intangible warmth suffused the room that had both her and the child breaking away from their staring contest to look Din’s way, and Sarah’s heart melted a little bit. If the depth of this unnamed emotion she felt really was coming from him, she had a feeling he liked being called that.

Grogu grumbled, then settled.

Sabine looked between them curiously, and Din broke the silence.

“I ran into a group of Quarren led by an Ongree. Said he was sent by Quar Ka’tara.”

“We know about him, he works for the Imps. We’ll have more to discuss about that later,” Sabine answered as she took a seat and leaned back in the chair.

“Thank you,” Din added after a moment, and Sarah felt the begrudging nature of an otherwise heartfelt sentiment.

“Family looks out for each other,” Sabine said with a smile. “Our hospitality is yours.”

The rest of the long flight passed by in a mostly amiable silence, broken only by Marrek’s music from below, and Sabine’s occasional instruction on where to fly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter nine is under revision :D Happy Yule!
> 
> A note on Sabine Wren... I freely admit, she's not a character I know super well yet. I'm re-watching the Clone Wars series, and I saw it as a kid, but it's been aaaaages, so I've mostly been pulling lore from the ever-helpful Wookiepedia and shamelessly twisting a few things here and there to suit my plot needs. She's a pretty important historical character for the plotline I have in mind.
> 
> So, hopefully my portrayal of her isn't so off-the-walls upsetting it kills your enjoyment of her. If it is... Woops, I'll do better in future stories! Because I am soooo not waiting to write or publish this fic until I'm all caught up on the TV show. Sorry, not sorry.
> 
> Also, if you're holding your breath for Bo-Katan to show up in this fic.... Nope. This is Din/Sarah/Sabine/Gideon/Too-Many-OCs - centric.
> 
> Mando'a translations:
> 
> Auretii - "Outsider" aka someone not Mandalorian. In certain contexts it can also mean "traitor" - Mando'a has a lot of words that have different meanings depending on how and when and where they are used.
> 
> Mando'ade - Their own word for Mandalorians, basically.
> 
> \---
> 
> Also, thanks to my nerdy Star Wars mom for catching a typo. I'll have to fix previous chapters... "Los Islie" is supposed to be "Mos Islie" woops!


	9. The Covert

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> At last, some exposition on Mandalorian lifestyle outside of the badass combat prowess we all know and love them for.
> 
> Fun times ahead.
> 
> Also... SQUEEEEEEEE! I've hit 250 pages and then some in the story, which is a huge milestone for me as a writer, and for this tale, too. 
> 
> A huge nod of thanks to my friend Numilani (check out his writing if you get the chance when he posts it!) for providing feedback that has greatly improved this work of literature.
> 
> He's also responsible for some -hilarious- moments of comedic relief any story revolving around danger and death needs to keep it something palatable. 11/10 great writing wingman.

Sarah really hadn’t been certain what to expect when they arrived, yet it still managed to surprise her. Their flight had taken them over a vast array of land, from stretches of empty, churning ocean, to thickly canopied forests, and finally over great fields of rocky grasslands, dotted with impossible looking stone formations that seemed as though they’d been planted there by great giants.

She’d been vaguely expecting them to be taken to some underground fortress, and was surprised when Sabine Wren directed them down towards what looked more like a cozy village than a hideout for a group of supersoldiers. She didn’t even notice it until they were almost directly above it, and only because she caught the brightly garbed figures of people walking amidst the dirt lanes.

They’d left the worst of the storms behind them, and now descended towards a large patch of flat, patchy earth in relative ease as Din Djarin brought the ship down.

Sarah couldn’t help but look excitedly out the windows, and took in the sight of small, green-domed shelters and patches of overgrown flora that could only be half-wild gardens. The village was situated at the base of a wickedly jagged mountain range, its foothills stretching out around the bowl of this grassy land for miles in either direction. In the far distance steep hills and cliffs gave way to stone canyons and evergreen forests, but it was the sights near to her that so captivated Sarah’s attention.

Everywhere she looked, she saw Mandalorians in their now familiar sets of armor. They came in all colors and a wide variety of variations on styles, and yet each had a distinctly uniform flavor that brought them all together. She was half started to realize that not all of them were human - there were several soldiers dressed in modified uniforms that served to cover their unusual bulk. One of them had a helmet on with a short cloak of flexible, segmented metal bulging out over the back of his head that covered the soft flesh of his unusual thick, trailing… thingy. Sarah was pretty sure he was a Twi’lek.

“Aaaand here we are,” Sabine announced. Sarah could hear the sounds of the Mandalorian passengers below disembarking, and was somewhat disappointed that the music had stopped.

“Thank you for offering us your hospitality,” Din Djarin said as he stood. Sabine smiled.

“This is the Way,” she said simply, and Sarah caught the conflict in Din’s mood as he offered the woman a short nod - a sense of longing mingled with something more complicated that she consciously focused on not prying deeper into.

Sabine went down first, then Sarah and Grogu, and finally Din. Sarah wasn’t surprised to find that a few of their passengers lingered - the orange and white guy who she could now see held a strange looking musical instrument, and another in bright red armor that looked much older than his companion’s sets.

Sabine entered an easy dialogue of banter with the red guy as she plopped her helmet back on, and Sarah found the bard falling into step beside her.

Caught between Din Djarin and the stranger, she wondered how they intended to fit through the door, and was mildly amused when Din’s hand at her back firmly directed her away from the musically inclined Mandalorian.

“You don’t need to hover,” she pointed out even as she let him guide her down the ramp. She heard the orange man laugh quietly at them.

“I’m not hovering.”

“You’re definitely hovering,” she confirmed.

“The lady’s right, I promise you - I intend neither of you nor your child harm,” the musician promised.

“It’s Marrek, right?” Sarah asked as she glanced at him briefly, before she turned her gaze to look around. The town was set up in orderly sections with clearly defined paths of simple dirt tracks between buildings, and she could see a group of children playing in an open space under the watchful gaze of several Mandalorians. Some of the older children wore partial sets of armor, while others were simply well dressed against the weather. Most were human, though she spotted several species at play.

“Indeed it is! Marrek the performer, at your service. I would be honored to play a tune for one as lovely as yourself,” he said, and she could practically  _ hear _ the wink in his voice.

Din Djarin’s head turned sharply to look at the man, and Sarah sighed.

“Relax - I’m just being friendly. If you have a claim over the lady, on my honor, I won’t infringe,” Marrek soothed.

“We’re not an item,” Din gruffly corrected.

“Well, then! There’s nothing to be upset over, is there, big guy?”

“Hold on,” Sarah interrupted, eyes wide. Was he being  _ serious? _ He couldn’t be. “I don’t--”

“Let’s go, stop dawdling. Marrek, get. She’s not available; she hasn’t passed the Rite of Initiation,” Sabine interrupted, then made a shooing motion at him.

“Ah, my sincerest apologies,” he said, sounding awkward and surprised, and quickly hurried off.

Sarah couldn’t have been more relieved.

When a hand came to settle on the small of her back again as they walked, a blush warmed her cheeks.

Not hovering, indeed.

~*~

Din Djarin did not know how to react. From the moment he had met Sabine and been shocked and appalled to see the woman with her helmet removed in front of him, to now being in the midst of what could easily be at least a hundred individuals who looked to be of his kind - he felt unbalanced and on edge. Supposed Mandalorians walked around in battle-scuffed armor both new and old, most wearing helmets and some without. Children were frequently seen throughout the orderly camp in various states of play, training, and schooling. Many stopped to wave at them, and he noticed Sarah and Grogu in particular drew many glances, likely for looking so obviously out of place for the woman’s dress and lack of armor, and Grogu’s unusual appearance.

He saw several species, some of whom had specially modified uniforms to better suit their unique build, and yet every last one of them had a distinctly Mandalorian flavor. Sabine drew his attention as she spoke up.

“Sarah, you and the child can stay here. Afera will get you set up with some food and lodging. Big and shiny, you’re with me. We’re going to meet with the Covert’s heads and figure out what we can do to help you on your mission… And what you might be willing to do for ours.”

His first, knee-jerk reaction was to refuse to be separated from them, but he recognized the necessity - and the implicit command. He looked over to meet Sarah’s gaze and found a warm, reassuring smile that reached her eyes.

“We’ll be fine. Go do what you need to.”

“I won’t be long,” he promised.

“I’d say you’re wrong about that, but I can already tell there’s nothing that will stop you. Are you  _ sure _ you guys aren’t an item?” Sabine teased good naturedly, and laughed over Sarah’s choked splutter. “Stop looking so scandalized, big guy. Come on, even with your  _ helmet _ on I can tell. Chop-chop,” she added, and struck off.

With a last look at his two family members as Sarah was joined by the red-armored Mandalorian, Din Djarin set off to follow.

Sabine led the way through the village until they came to a central building that looked more permanent in construction than the others they had seen; it had an old, stone block foundation and a newly welded metal frame, and from within he could hear the sounds of music, laughter, and many voices.

His guide brushed aside a heavy tarp in the entrance, and he realized it was a tavern. It was a circular room with a central bar that framed a small, raised dais where three Mandalorians sat on stools and played a fast tavern jig. One wore his helmet, but the other two did not, and the lead singer belted out the lyrics of the song in well enunciated _ Mando’a. _

In all respects except their bared faces, Din Djarin could not find any immediate difference between what he recognized to be of his culture, and those he witnessed around them. It was… unsettling.

His guide led the way to a back table where four other Mandalorians sat in conversation, helmets set on the table or by their feet, each bristling with the usual assortment of weaponry. Two were marked with the sigils of clan crests, while the others’ armor were undecorated except for their colors. Of them, one was female, and another was not human. The humanoid shaped Twi’lek smiled up at Sabine and raised his tankard with a sharp, cheery greeting in the  _ Mando’a _ language.

_ “Su cuy’gar, _ Sabine! Who’s your shiny friend?”

Five heads turned towards him, and Din felt his throat constrict. It took effort to introduce himself as etiquette demanded.

“Din Djarin, Clan Mudhorn. We are grateful for your hospitality.”

The other woman spoke up, a blond with darker skin and sharp, scared features with a close-cropped buzz cut. “Psh, of course you have it, you’re one of us.” 

Was he?

“He’s from the Children of the Watch,” Sabine explained, and caused Din Djarin to whip his head to look at her as the others shared raised eyebrows. He’d never heard the term before, and he wasn’t sure he liked it.

The Twi’lek snorted.

“So he’s one of them. Alright, whatever. He’s still Mandalorian. That makes him family.”

“So, what brings you here? Another fighter for the cause?”

“Perhaps,” Sabine said, and invited him to take a seat as she found her own. A waitress in green armor stopped by the table with two wooden mugs, set them down, then whisked away without even waiting for acknowledgement. “He’s got a Foundling. Little green guy, looks like the one the Imps have been snuffling their noses around for in the ports.”

“He is,” Din confirmed as he sat slowly, and placed his hands on his lap. His back was ramrod straight, and he felt stiff and uncomfortable. “I’ve been tasked with returning him to his kind. I was told other coverts may have information - I am looking for the Jedi.”

“The  _ what?” _ the blue-skinned Twi’lek burst out, incredulous.

The man next to him in black armor spluttered his drink, and sat back to wipe his bearded face off.

“You didn’t say anything about Jedi,” Sabine accused with raised eyebrows. “They  _ aren’t _ known to be friendly to the majority of us. Were you not taught the songs?”

“I was raised in the fighting core, not the lore keepers.” Apparently, there was a lot he hadn’t been taught, and the unease warred against the need to keep a calm composure.

“Fair enough, but still. They don’t exactly have a good history with us - in fact, many of the weaponry we use today originally came about because of the need to combat them,” Sabine explained. There was a strange expression on her face as she spoke, but what caused it or what it could mean, he couldn’t say.

“Even so,” Din Djarin began, and took a deep, calming breath. It mostly worked. “It is my task.”

“Is the child one of them?” the Twi’lek asked, leaned forward on folded arms with a deep frown.

“We believe he may have been initially raised with them. He’s been separated from his family for some time,” Din revealed cautiously, and worried if this would cause a new threat to his ward. “He is not our enemy.”

The man in black armor snorted.

“Of course he’s not, he’s a kid, and he’s with you, isn’t he?”

“Back on topic,” Sabine declared after she chugged down a generous portion of her mug of  _ ne’tra gal, _ a sweet tasting ale the color of black dirt. Din Djarin could smell the aroma of it in the tavern air, thick and cloying, and had never felt more homesick. “Your old ship’s off the grid for both Imperial and New Republic systems, right? We need a ride, and if you’re willing to help us, we’ll send out requests to the other coverts to actively look for the information you need. Otherwise, I’ll find out what we know here and that’s the best we can offer you.”

It wasn’t an unreasonable offer.

The four other members of the table sat back in their seats as the vibrantly decorated woman crossed her arms and waited to see his decision.

“Let’s hear what you have in mind,” Din decided finally, and sat back to listen.

~*~

Afera, as Sarah quickly discovered, was a fairly gruff, short-tempered individual. With an  _ incredibly _ rough voice, like his vocal chords had been damaged at some point. The moment Sabine left them alone, the red helmet turned her way as he regarded her with a palpable, vague animosity that unnerved her.

“You are not of us,” he stated flatly.

Sarah adjusted Grogu in her arms, resisted the strong urge to attempt and deflect his focus, and met his gaze levelly.

“Probably not in the way you would expect me to be, no,” she agreed carefully.

“Yet you claim kinship.”

“I’m  _ not _ here to indulge your curiosity. If you have a problem with me, get on with it.”

Contrary to her expectations, that seemed to soften his mood, or at least he didn’t seem to stand quite so stiffly.

“You care for the Foundling,” Afera observed instead, and looked down at the child.

Grogu growled at him, and Sarah had to resist the urge to laugh. That probably wouldn’t earn her any favors with her host. She gently admonished the child for his rude response by jostling him lightly, and gave Grogu a reproachful  _ look _ that his ears drooped at. Satisfied, she turned her attention back to her host.

“I do.”

“This way,  _ auretii.” _

“My name is Sarah.”

“Of course,  _ auretii.” _

This time, when Grogu growled a displeased grumble, Sarah let him.

She followed after the warrior through their camp, past domed buildings made from thick, glossy leaves and bark-stripped saplings that formed the frames of their abodes. Many, though not all, had raised platforms beneath them which no doubt helped keep the interiors dry from the heavy rainfalls the area likely saw.

Sarah was led to a slightly different shaped building than the others - this one had four wide archways with a sweeping overhang over each, and hip-high walls that allowed a nearly full view of the surrounding environment. Inside was a ring of cook fires, stovetops, counters, and a portable three-tiered sink set up beside a raised, metal water tank. Women and a few men were scattered about the room as they went about various productive tasks, and Sarah felt sorely out of place in her dress and unbound hair.

_ Everyone _ had armor on, though several individuals had gear that looked to be far below the quality as the sets she had seen on the warriors she and Grogu had been rescued by. A few only wore armor on their upper torsos as Sabine did.

“Oh! A new gal? Welcome,” someone greeted as they entered. She was a short woman with broad hips and shoulders, and a thick, stocky build. Her armor was a brilliant violet streaked with bright blue slashes across the breastplate, and she wore only one vambrace on her right arm. Her short, downy black hair was wild and curly and half-way tamed into a kind of mini afro, and a long scar ran down the left side of her face that made her eye dip at the edge. “You look kinda scrawny, we’ll have that fixed in no time, don’t you worry one bit about that.”

“Sarah,” she supplied, tired of people commenting on her small build. She supposed she shouldn’t be so surprised; she was very out of her element surrounded by these people who seemed to live and breathe the military arts as a normal, daily way of life.

“She has not undergone the Rites,” Afera announced flatly. “She is _au_ _ retii.” _

Sarah’s patience only went so far, and she fixed him with an unamused glare.

“I have a name, and just because I don’t measure up to  _ your _ picky standards doesn’t mean I’m the scum off the bottom of your boot. I didn’t even know Mandalorians  _ existed _ until recently, so excuse me for not being well educated yet.”

He turned to face her as a hush fell in the room, talk turned into quiet asides as several folks looked over at them with open curiosity. Sarah belatedly realized that most people here weren’t speaking in a language she understood.

It certainly made her feel like an outsider.

As they squared off, Grogu  _ meeped _ and scrunched his neck down into his robe.

“And yet you’ve been granted a place in his clan?” Afera demanded, aghast.

“You’re making a lot of assumptions for someone who can’t even be bothered to ask for more information before making them.”

“Ok, ok, hold up, I’m confused. What’s going on, here?” the curly haired woman asked as she stepped up between them and eyed them both. “You say she’s _a_ _ uretii _ and yet she’s part of a clan? What clan?”

“Mudhorn,” Sarah answered, abruptly sick to her stomach. She felt halfway like she was boasting about it, and it didn’t sit well with her especially with how new a place in her life it was. She hadn’t been expecting people to challenge her about it, and she felt at a loss of what to say.

Yet just because she hadn’t yet had time to truly embrace it and sort out her own feelings on the matter, it didn’t mean she was going to let them shame her for finding a place of belonging that she’d been offered and accepted. She tightened her fist, and felt fingertips scraped along the thin scar drawn across her palm.

There were no words to describe the feeling it brought her, except to say it felt  _ right. _

“Never heard of it,” the woman dismissed with a shrug, unconcerned. “But that’s not really unusual, there’s so many. Afera, sod off and leave the lass to me. Oh- Wait. First, who brought her in?”

“Sabine Wren, ” Sarah supplied when Afera’s delayed response suggested he was ready to resume arguing, with the way he puffed up his chest and drew a deep breath.

“Oh! Well, now, why didn’t you lead with that you old grump? Go on, get.”

Afera fixed her with an inscrutable helmet-stare she was certain hid an unfriendly glare, then he turned sharply on a heel and departed. Slowly, conversation in the busy kitchens returned to their normal flow.

“Now, then. I’m Marasarashal, but you can call me Mars because that’s a wretched mouthful and no one uses it, anyways. I’m assuming then you’ll need to be shown how things work around here.”

“Yes, please. Sabine said I’d be shown to food and lodging; there’s just the three of us, my clanmate and our Foundling,” she said awkwardly, and shifted him in her arms. “Grogu,” she supplied as the woman looked down at the child curiously.

“Well, then. As you can see, these are the kitchens. You’ll be expected to work here while you stay - I’ll sort out the schedule later and we’ll figure something out. Hon, you are an absolute  _ mess. _ Did Sabine pull you lot out of a tight spot?”

“Shoot outs are sweaty business,” Sarah replied in a wry tone, reminded fondly of Cara as she did. Deciding that she needed to offer more information, she elaborated. “Our ship was attacked while Mando was away. Sabine and the others with her saved our lives.”

A familiar voice joined their conversation from behind.

“Don’t let her fool you. She might be small, but she’s got the heart of a Nexu. There were twelve dead outside that death trap by the time we got there. I hate it when the ladies take all the fun.”

Both women turned to see Marrek enter, helmet under an arm. He had chiseled, charming features, with an easy smile on bronzed skin and rakish, dark-blond hair that made him seem younger than Sarah suspected he really was. He towered over her by at least a foot, and seemed even larger still with the powerful presence his loudly decorated armor boasted.

“My! There’s not a scrap of armor on you, how’d you manage it?” the woman asked, openly impressed. Sarah’s cheeks heated. She didn’t like to remember that desperate fight or the terror she’d felt during it, and yet a part of her felt a fierce pride at the accomplishment. She had survived a difficult situation, and Grogu was safe. She’d done her job.

“They bottlenecked themselves at the end of the ship, after blowing open the back hatch,” she began reluctantly. “I stole the rifle off one that entered. Better firepower than what I had.”

“And caused a lovely explosion out over the rest, blew them into pieces all over the docking bay. Ker-POOSH!” Marrek exclaimed as he mimed an explosion with his hands. Somehow, his light humor over such a dark topic made Sarah feel a little easier.

“We’ll make a warrior of you yet,” the woman promised with a grin.

“Ah…”

“Now, then - Say, Marrek, do you know if we have any open lodging or if I’ll have to arrange some? I could put her and the kid up for a few days in my place while they build their own.”

“Not sure if they’ll be staying long enough to need to do that, but I’d love to convince her otherwise,” Marrek said with a wink. “But a few days at least. I’ve got space.”

“We can bunk on the ship, we don’t need to be an inconvenience,” Sarah offered. She really didn’t want to share space with anyone else, and she was sure Din Djarin wouldn’t appreciate the lack of privacy, considering the touchy matter regarding his helmet.

“Nonsense, it’s basic hospitality to offer family sanctuary. Say… Marrek, why don’t you show Sarah and her child around? I’ll wrap up here and talk with the ladies about the cooking schedule, I’m thinking I’ll have her work in the mornings. She can train after the breakfast shift ends. Meet up with me after dinner.”

Mildly alarmed at how swiftly her life seemed to be being taken control of by complete strangers, yet not actually certain how to refuse, Sarah listened silently as the two conversed.

“Make it  _ before _ dinner and you have a deal - There’s no way I’m missing tonight’s performance!”

“You and your music. Fine, before dinner, but come early because I’ll be busy serving. I’m lead cook tonight.”

“Alright.”

Sarah wasn’t sure how to feel about being passed around from person to person, and wasn’t exactly in a place to argue. Marrek turned out to be pleasant company however, as he helpfully explained the chores she’d be expected to do in the kitchen work, and in helping take care of the covert’s children during the day when she wasn’t busy with her own lessons. Grogu seemed excited about everything he saw, and Sarah was delighted when her guide brought them both to what was clearly a small, outdoor school. Around a dozen young adolescents sat kneeling in rows on the bare ground, with straight backs and fists planted on their thighs as a woman in yellow armor patiently lectured. It took her a moment to realize it was on language, and Marrek smiled at her curiosity.

“Everyone learns it, among some other languages that are just useful to have. Speaking  _ Mando’a _ is part of what makes us Mandalorian. You should learn.”

Sarah wanted to accept. She really,  _ really _ wanted to. Yet she didn’t want to commit to something without knowing exactly what she was getting into - the irony of which wasn’t lost on her - and decided to talk to Din Djarin about it, first.

“What is  _ Mando’a?” _ she asked instead, even though the answer was rather obvious. Marrek didn’t seem to mind.

“Most will tell you it’s our native tongue and leave it at that, but they’re doing a great injustice to a  _ beautiful  _ language full of passionate expression. Love, merriment, and joy - And the wretchedly sweet woes of the heart, from shattered dreams to unrequited desires. All can find an expression in the words of  _ Mando’a. _ It is a language that lives and breaths on the essence of life,” he explained with a dramatic flourish. It drew the eyes of a few children, before the instructor barked at them to pay attention in a sharp, authoritative voice that broked no arguments.

Marrek only winked at the woman and mouthed an apology, then took Sarah by the arm to guide her away.

She tried to ignore the butterflies it stirred in her stomach to be so carefully handled by someone who definitely looked like he could break her in two on accident.

“You are very quiet,” Marrek observed after a bit, “And somehow, I don’t think that’s normal for you. Overwhelmed?”

“I am. I never expected to… I never expected this, among other things,” she admitted, and gestured to the space around them. Marrek had a thoughtful expression on his face, before he changed course and began leading her in the direction of the jagged foothills.

“I was fifteen years old when I was found and rescued by the man who came to be my father,” he revealed. “I was old for a Foundling, but it is not so unusual for us to adopt older children or even adults into our way of life, if they show the mettle for it. I distinguished myself at the time by killing the man who had murdered my first family. I and my sister were taken in. What did you do to distinguish yourself? Afera might scoff, but I can’t imagine someone from the Children of the Watch adopting someone lightly. They are a very strict sect.”

Sarah took note of the fact his knowledge likely meant he’d been eavesdropping on her in the kitchens before finally choosing to intrude, then focused on another part of what he’d said.

“Children of the Watch?”

“It is what we call those of us who adhere to more… Religious beliefs. The old tenants, strict and often unyielding, many of their kind don’t consider someone like me to be a Mandalorian, for I show my face.”

Sarah wondered what Din Djarin thought of them.

“Why don’t they show their faces?” she asked, but Marrek tutted at her with a smile.

“I think you should ask  _ him _ that. In any case - you’re a clever thing. You are avoiding my question. How did you distinguish yourself? You’ll need to learn to talk about this if you don’t want the others here folding you over like a dirty dishrag. It’s no good to be thought of as weak, believe me.”

Sarah narrowed her eyes, lips drawn into a thin line.

“I’m not used to sharing personal details with complete strangers. If they choose to underestimate me for it, that’s their problem.”

Marrek raised his brows at her, then smiled.

“Even so - A claim of clanship for an  _ auretii? _ You have a hard road ahead of you if you don’t wish to cause a fight. Such things are taken very seriously. I’ll be honest, I’m not sure what to think of it myself.”

Sarah clenched her jaw, and stopped walking. They were in a spot where no one was immediately visible, a quieter section of camp, and it seemed as good a place as any for this conversation.

“We met in a gunfight. I saved Grogu’s life, Mando saved mine.”

“Mando? You know that’s just short for Mandalorian, right? Any one of us could be called that.”

“I’m not sure I’m allowed to share his name,” Sarah admitted warily. Marrek’s eyes lit up with understanding, and he gestured for her to continue with her story. When it was clear he didn’t plan on relenting, she did. This time, she offered more details, telling him of how she’d been in the markets when all hell had broken loose, and the ensuing battle.

Once she started talking, little details suddenly tumbled out into elaborate descriptions of the unfolding events, of the fear and the pain and the desperate, horrible actions she’d taken in order to flee with the child in her arms. She told him of the storm trooper that had shot her and of Din Djarin’s timely rescue, and of how she’d thought she was going to die at any moment.

Naturally, she left out… certain details. He didn’t need to know about her unusual abilities, and the less who did, the better.

“You did remarkably well for someone who’s never been in a real fight before, unless I’m mistaken.” 

“I’d seen fights, and I’d escape a few… scuffles, but I’d never been an actual participant. I was taught some things to defend myself, but it… It didn’t prepare me for that,” she admitted quietly. “Mando has been teaching me more since.”

“That’s good. It makes all the difference in the way of survival. Perhaps you’ll learn something while you’re here that might surprise him in your next bout.”

Sarah couldn’t help the thrill his suggestion gave her as she glanced at him.

“As much as I’d like to stop eating the ground as a regular part of my diet, I don’t think you can teach me anything that will surprise him. He’s a force of nature.”

“All Mandaorians are,” Marrek said with a saucy wink. “How about you show me what you know?”

Both of them looked down as Grogu let out a tired sounding squeal, his ears drooped. Sarah smiled apologetically.

“Maybe another time - I need to find him something to eat.”

“Bah, don’t chicken out on me. You can feed the kid, then we’ll spar. Or are you going to break my heart and show yourself a coward?” he asked, and Sarah wasn’t entirely sure if he was teasing… or seriously challenging her. Both, she decided.

She didn’t like admitting that it riled her, and she liked even less the idea of backing down from his challenge.

“Alright, then.”

“Great! Here we are, my humble abode. This is called a  _ vheh'yaim  _ \- though it is more traditional to have a dug-out beneath it for better protection, the wet weather here doesn’t make that feasible. Ah, I will not miss this planet when we leave.”

Sarah looked at the leaf-covered structure and shifted her weight. Grogu grumbled quietly.

“You’re abandoning the town?” she asked, and followed him inside after a moment’s hesitation. He held the heavy oilskin tarp up for her, and inside she found a comfortable space with a reed-mat floor on a raised wooden platform. There were no decorations, and it was sparsely furnished with a sleeping pallet, a long, green metal lock box, and a scattering of personal effects one would expect to find in a soldier’s home. The center of the room held a small brazier of surprisingly primitive make, and a pile of chopped wood was stacked neatly by the doorway, bark-side up.

“A static target is an easy target,” he explained, and stirred her memory of Din Djarin’s lessons. “We keep moving so that we do not present ourselves as easy prey to those who hunt us. We have been here longer than we have in other locations - the weather and the inhospitale nature of this place makes it unwelcoming, and the landscape affords us good shelter against aerial strikes. Hard to sneak up on us when we can see anyone coming from miles away.

“Targeting systems and tracking sensors are jammed by a type of ore found in the mountains here, and it goes for miles. As I’m sure you saw, our buildings are not easily viewed from above. Here we are,” he broke off from his explanations as he opened his footlocker and pulled out a cloth-wrapped parcel. Grogu squealed in delight when it was set atop the top of the chest and unfolded, which revealed a rather appetizing looking loaf of packed grains and specks of what Sarah guessed to be fruit and nuts.

“ _ Uj'alayi,  _ nutritious without the cost of flavor. Does the child like berries?”

“He’s more of a carnivore, but he does eat fruits.”

“Ah, well, even our meat-eating friends seem to stomach this well enough, so I’m sure it won’t bother his little tummy. How old is he?” he questioned as he pulled a knife from his boot to cut off three thin slices of the thick, cake like food. 

“Around fifty years old is our current knowledge, but I don’t know if it’s true.”

After expressing his surprise, Marrek offered two slices to Sarah and invited her to sit on the floor, which she accepted. Grogu seemed happy to be on his own two feet again, as instead of sitting down he accepted his slice and went directly to waddling around, looking about the new space with interest.

Sarah kept half an eye on him and the other on Marrek as she tried the  _ Uj’alayi, _ and found it tasted pleasantly sweet. It was unexpectedly a little sticky, like it’d had some sort of honey or glaze used to bind it all together, and she realized it was not a cooked dish.

“Thank you,” she enthused.

“You’re welcome! Now, then - tell me; are you a fan of song? You’ve a voice to coax the sweetest of melodies to life. Positively beautiful, I’d love to hear you sing.”

Sarah choked on her cake flat, and quickly covered her mouth to hide her impoliteness as she coughed with a closed mouth, and pounded her other fist on her chest. Marrek laughed at her expense, then something in the air changed that made the hair on the back of Sarah’s neck stand up on end, oppressive and sharp with danger.

“Marrek?” she choked out, embarrassment forgotten as it was replaced by alarm at his shocked expression. He clutched at his throat, and his mouth worked open and shut as if he tried to speak and could not.

It took her longer than it should have to realize the problem, and Sarah turned to find Grogu glaring at the man with his food in one hand and his other extended towards the Mandalorian, tiny fingers curled into a fist as he slowly squeezed.

“Grogu,  _ no!” _ Sarah cried, and rushed over to put herself between them. “He is  _ not _ our enemy, stop that  _ right now!” _

The child looked up at her with wide eyes and drooped ears even as he stumbled back and fell onto his rump, panting with exertion.

Marrek croaked behind her, and wheezed for breath as he gasped great gulps of air, freed of the invisible hold on his throat.

“I am  _ so _ sorry, are you alright?” Sarah gushed and scooped Grogu up into her arms, afraid the Mandalorian might choose to take more than understandable offense at the child’s unexpected attack. She turned to face the man, hackles raised. “He’s - It’s just - He’s still learning,” she fumbled, not sure how much to reveal and terrified at the prospect of their abilities being discovered.

“Still learning  _ what?” _ Marrek demanded as he stared at her with an expression that sent chills down Sarah’s spine. Her eyes darted to the door as she weighed the situation, but the Mandalorian did not move from his kneeling position on the floor. He was hunched over partway, with one large, fingerless-gloved hand still hovered protectively over his throat as he stared them down.

“He has… Powers, it’s why the Imperials are trying to find him,” Sarah explained hesitantly, even as she thought of tricking this man into forgetting what he had seen, what he’d experienced.

And yet, something stayed her hand.

Maybe it was the fact he hadn’t yet moved to attack them, or that he hadn’t shifted into an overly defensive position, or maybe it was some need to prove to Grogu that the Mandalorian who had welcomed them into his home was really their ally. Using her own abilities on him to subvert the situation seemed like a step backwards in educating the child that his behavior was ill-placed.

“He’s a baby  _ Jedi?” _ Marrek demanded after several moments, incredulous. Sarah swallowed.

“We think so, yes.”

Marrek regarded them with an alarmingly closed-off expression, until at once something in the atmosphere of the room shifted. He settled back and dropped the raised hand to his lap. He began to pick up the  _ Uj’alayi _ he had dropped, and carefully collected its crumbled bits into one palm without quite taking his eyes off of them.

“He is dangerous,” he stated bluntly.

“So are we,” Sarah pointed out, and tensed anew.

“Not dangerous like  _ that. _ How can you even train him? What if he turns on you?”

“He wouldn’t. He’s a child, Marrek, not a monster. He is still learning what is appropriate and what’s not - it’s no different than another child learning when it is ok to hit someone and when it’s not called for. I think he thought you were hurting me when I choked on the bread.”

Grogu growled and grumbled, ears laid back as he scrunched his neck down into the folds of his robes.

“And when he throws a tantrum over something he doesn’t like?” Marrek challenged, still distrustful. “He could kill you with a thought.”

“No, he couldn’t,” Sarah said quietly. Feeling wretched inside, she laced her next words with power, arms tightened in their hold around Grogu as he burbled up at her in confusion. She didn’t want to do this, and that made it hard to focus. “And you will not speak of this to anyone, for it never happened,” she said quietly.

But Marrek’s eyes widened, and instead of caving to her suggestion, he jumped up to his feet and took a step backwards, and pointed at her. Sarah’s heart accelerated, then lodged in her throat with panic.

It was like reliving a nightmare from her past all over again.

“You’re one of them,” he breathed, and the accusation twisted cruelly in her chest. “You’re--”

“What’s going on here?” Sabine’s voice cut into the conversation as she let herself in, and looked between Sarah and Marrek. Din Djarin shoved his way inside after her, took one look at the defensive stance of both inhabitants, and immediately moved to put Sarah at his back. She closed her eyes, overcome with a feeling of shame she had not felt in years and had hoped to never face again.

And fear - great fear, for her secret had been exposed, and she did not know what was going to happen next.

She forced herself to open her eyes when Marrek spoke.

“Those two are _Jetii_ sorcerers \- the child tried to kill me, and the witch tried to touch my mind! I _felt_ it, Sabine, it is the same as all those years ago. Jedi mind tricks don’t work on me, not anymore,” he said with a haunted tremor in his voice.

“I know the child is a Jedi - I did not know the woman was, too,” Sabine said sharply with a glance to Din Djarin.

“I’m  _ not _ a Jedi,” Sarah snapped acerbically, tightening her hold on the child in her arms. His face was pressed into her shirt. “I wasn’t born into them, I  _ wasn’t _ raised by them, and I certainly haven’t joined their ranks just because everyone keeps trying to tell me it’s what I am!”

“You could have fooled me,” Marrek said with narrowed eyes.

“Enough. We’ll leave now - We won’t bring you anymore trouble,” Din soothed as he interjected.

“Everyone  _ hold up,” _ Sabine announced flatly, both hands raised. “Let’s talk this out. You say the child tried to kill you, Marrek. Why?”

“Apparently it thought Sarah was in danger just because she barked on her bread,” Marrek retorted acidly. “I couldn’t  _ breathe _ . It choked my throat.”

“It’s happened once before. During an arm wrestling match with a friend,” Din Djarin spoke up. “I corrected the behavior, and he didn’t bother her again. He’s still learning.”

“He’s dangerous!” Marrek snapped.

“And he is one of us,” Sabine pointed out, voice raised just loud enough to command their attention without breaking into a shout. “The child is a Foundling. Have you forgotten that Tarre Vizsla and several Mandalorians to follow were once of the Jedi Order? They were great assets to our cause in the eras they served in, and don’t forget I’ve served alongside others of their kind. This child will be that one day for us… And, I hope, you as well,” Sabine challenged as she pivoted on one heel to fix Sarah with a fierce, penetrating gaze. “I want no more secrets between us, not of this magnitude. You should be ashamed of yourselves for hiding something like this from us.”

“Keeping it secret has been the only thing keeping me alive,” Sarah snapped, talking over Din’s beginning sentence. He fell silent to let her battle this out herself, something she’d appreciate later. “Look at what’s happening right now. This is not the first time I have discovered animosity towards one who wields something that is beyond the normal ken. Do you think I want everyone knowing I’m a freak? To be hunted down for it? Cast out just because I’m different?”

“It sounds more like you hide in cowardice, too afraid to embrace your own self. You have power. So? Many others have before you, and others still do today.” After her heated accusation, Sabine’s voice took on a tone of patient lecture that Sarah found both queerly reassuring and aggravating to be put through. “This is not the same thing as allowing your enemies not to see the full breadth of your might. This was deception to ones who would risk their lives for you - have already risked their lives. You would spit in the face of that after claiming to be a sister at arms?”

“You expect me to go around telling everyone I meet that I can meddle with their thoughts if I so chose?” Sarah demanded, made angry by the unwanted guilt Sabine’s words stirred up. “No one would ever trust me. You might as well shoot me now.”

She ignored the way Din Djarin’s posture shifted at her words, and the coiled tension around him spiked in alarm. Grogu beeped miserably, and Sarah bit her tongue as she seethed.

“I certainly don’t trust you now,” Sabine said gravely, then deliberately folded her arms across her chest. Marrek and Din both had hands hovering near the holsters on their hips, and neither moved a muscle. “I want the truth. What are the extent of your abilities?”

Sarah wanted to shrink back from the weight of her gaze, to hide behind Din Djarin and tell them it was none of their business, that it didn’t matter because she’d be leaving soon anyways.

She wanted to reach out with the Force and wrest away their focus, drive back their thoughts and protect herself from the vulnerability this unwanted exposition had ripped open in her. She felt the deep seated anger rising as fear choked the words from her throat, and yet still Sabine stared her down.

Finally, Sarah moved. She stepped out from behind Din Djarin and squared off with Sabine, and ignored the sting of hot, angry tears in her eyes as she tipped her chin up.

“I am Sarah Aidak Skolesky. I am  _ not _ a Jedi, and even if I was, they aren’t evil,” she declared stiffly, acutely aware of the child who no doubt listened to the ongoing argument. Her ears were ringing, and she could feel her heart as it pounded rapidly, palms sweaty. “I can... shift the focus of others, to walk by undetected by those who would seek to intrude, and rebuff the prying of others into undefended minds. 

“Grogu and Din Djarin are each under my protective wards to deflect against that and biometric tracking, and I have been learning how to use telepathic communication. I can trick the eyes to see what is not there, or hide what is. I can meddle,” she finished as her voice cracked. “I can often sense the surface emotions of those around me. More, if I choose to pry,” she added hoarsely.

“That explains why you were so hard to keep track of in the city,” Sabine said slowly. “That’s useful.”

_ “Useful?” _ Marrek snapped, incredulous. Sarah was mildly disturbed that she mirrored his sentiment.

Sabine finally broke eye contact with her to look the bard’s way, her visage still marred by a severe frown. She raised a brow at him.

“Yes, useful. Din Djarin - You will leave the woman with me for the rest of the day. I will not cause unprovoked harm to your clanmate,” she began, voice harsh with authority, “But I  _ will _ test her mettle. I cannot let this pass unchecked. You owe me this right to challenge her.”

“Sabine--” Marrek was cut off by a sharp gesture from the female Mandalorian, and clenched his jaw shut.

“Sarah?” Din prompted as he looked at her.

“Take Grogu,” Sarah said faintly, and looked down to address the child in her arms. She smiled at him with more confidence than she really felt, and kissed the top of his forehead. “It’s alright. You’ll be safe with Din, and I can take care of myself.” She certainly hoped she could.

Grogu cooed then warbled at her, and she got the distinct impression he had questions and uncertainties, and none of it was anything she was able to address right now. With a silent promise to talk to him about it later in the hopes he’d understand enough of it, Sarah shifted him over to Din’s care, then took a step towards Sabine, tense and unhappy.

“Alright,” she said.

“Come with me,” Sabine ordered shortly, and led the way outside.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter ten is under revision ;)
> 
> Mando'a translations:
> 
> Auretii - This has come up before. It means "outsider" in the context Afera uses it here. (In other contexts, it may also be used as a word for "traitor").
> 
> Su cuy'gar - "Hello!" Literally translates as "You're still alive"
> 
> Ne'tra gal - Black Ale. A dark Mandalorian alcoholic beverage that is a sweet tasting, lightly spiced beer similar to milk stout.
> 
> Vheh'yaim - Literally "Earth house." As Marrek helpfully explains, they usually have a dug-out below the green dome, which serves for better protection and allows them to build gunner nests right into the earth they can stand in and shoot from. A traditional Mandalorian home for the nomadic settlements.
> 
> Uj'alayi - Uj cake. Another uniquely Mandalorian thing; it's an uncooked, very dense, cake-like food made of ground nuts, sweet-tasting and scented syrup, pureed dried fruit, and spices. It's pretty versatile, and can be made from a variety of ingredients, which is useful for a culture that is often on the move and travels to planets with a vast array of different flora and produce. I don't have a literal translation for this one, so I'm not sure what "uj" refers to... if anyone knows, please hit me up!
> 
> Normally it's a flat-pressed patty type thing, but Marrek simply made himself one big giant compressed block he cuts slices off of. Man's gotta eat!
> 
> Jetii - Literally the Mando'a word for "Jedi"
> 
> Nexu - this isn't Mando'a, but I thought some people might not remember this fun star wars creature. If you've seen the SW Prequels, this is that scary cat-like monster that slashes Padme across the back in the coliseum when she, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and Anakin Skywalker are held captive for execution.


	10. Marrek

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This one's a shortie, so you get a bonus upload of two chapters in the same day ;D

As the women left, Marrek turned to face the man he’d been left alone with, and the child in his arms. It looked at him with wide, deceptively innocent eyes he no longer trusted. Some part of him recognized the child’s distress - the ears dropped back, the whites of his eyes just peeking at the edges of his large irises, and the strained quality to his tiny features - yet he could not reconcile what he saw now with what he had just experienced.

It had caught him badly off guard, something he was neither used to experiencing nor pleased to have undergone. Sarah had such a pleasant disposition behind those fierce blue eyes of her, he was still reeling from discovering her and the child’s shared secret.

“I’ll go,” Din Djarin said abruptly, and turned to leave.

“No. You stay,” Marrek ordered sharply, a spike of alarm straightening his back. He could feel a vein pulsing on his forehead, a mark of the tension that coiled in his body like a tightened spring, ready to pop. “You two aren’t leaving my sight.”

“The kid isn’t a threat. He didn’t know any better.”

“You’re not the one who got choked by him,” Marrek said grimly.

“No. He’s saved my life,” the Mandalorian revealed, and carefully shifted the child in his arms. “More than once.”

“Of course he saved you, you’re  _ protecting _ it.”

A tense pause, and then that shiny ass helmet dipped in a nod. Marrek twitched.

“So,” he started as he walked to his locker box and sat down on it. He no longer had any appetite for the food in his hand, but he wasn’t willing to waste it. So he started picking at it, eating a small crumble at a time. “You’re the most messed up Watch Child I’ve ever met, and that’s saying something. I thought you guys took dislike of outsiders to a whole new extreme.” He was going somewhere with this, and he watched the stranger closely.

Din Djarin did not move to sit, nor did he move to leave. He simply stood there at supposed ease, but Marrek didn’t miss the fact he kept the kid in one arm and his gun-hand free.

Or that the big guy had a set of  _ Whistling Birds _ on his vambrace. They must have cost a small fortune in material, and that didn’t even count the Beskar their deadly shafts were made from, but apparently, this mysterious lunk of metal could afford it.

The silence stretched on, and Marrek frowned. The silent treatment got old, fast.

“So, they bewitch you into trusting them or something?” he challenged, and smiled darkly as the helmet snapped up to look at him, Din’s attention now fully claimed from the child.

“No.”

“You sure about that? The girl says she can meddle with your thoughts. Maybe she’s been changing things when you’re not looking. It’s not easy to tell, trust me. I’ve been there.”

“I know. She’s been training me to resist it.”

_ That _ was a surprise, and Marrek raised his eyebrows.

“Jedi don’t teach outsiders their ways. Makes them all nervous when others know just what they're capable of.”

“Sarah isn’t a Jedi, and I’m not an outsider to her.”

Both of them glanced down as the kid burbled at them, and Marrek was at war with himself when the little green guy then  _ raspberried _ at him. A part of him wanted to say it was pretty cute, but mostly, it just disturbed him to see something so frighteningly powerful hide in the guise of something so… helpless looking.

“So… She’s training you,” Marrek started cautiously.

“Yes.”

“What’s she taught you?” He shifted on his seat and leaned back a bit, not quite putting his full weight on the pole at his back.

“What do you think? She’s teaching me what I need to know.”

“Yeah, do you even know what that is? Because I do,” Marrek said as he tapped a finger against his temple.

The stranger sighed, and it was several moments before he spoke again.

“Recognizing when it happens. Learning to resist it, learning to block it out entirely. She’s used the… Telepathy, to communicate. It’s new to her as it is to me. It’s been useful.”

“Yeah, useful, you guys keep saying that.”

“I judge her by her actions, not by assumption.”

Marrek scowled at him.

“Yeah, well. So, the kid ever killed anyone?” He was betting the answer was  _ yes. _

“He has. A Stormtrooper.”

Marrek worked his jaw, then cocked his head as if it let him listen better, and brought a hand up. He turned it over in the air in an obvious gesture for the Mandalorian to continue. Pulling information out of Sarah and this untalkative lump was like trying to pull teeth.

“We were pinned down by Moff Gideon and his troops,” the warrior began, and Marrek did a mental double-take. “They sent an Incinerator in to burn us out. The kid threw the flames back at him.”

“Hold up,” Marrek said with a raised hand, “Moff  _ Gideon? _ He’s supposed to be dead.” This was a lot to take in. Against his better judgement, he was starting to get an inkling of why their guests were so up-tight. They didn’t just have run-ins with Imperial castoffs; this was something much bigger.  _ If _ the Mandalorian before him was telling the truth, that was.

Marrek had always counted himself a good judge of character. He really didn’t like that his instincts weren’t giving him an unquestionable excuse to hate this guy.

“He’s not.”

Marrek swore softly.

“Alright, so the kid threw some fire around. Why’s Moff Gideon after him?”

“I don’t know.”

“So you just find this super powered alien baby the Empire’s got a bounty on, and decide to be it’s dad?” Marrek drawled. “I’m missing something here.”

“He needed protecting.”

Marrek blinked, then leaned forward and scrutinized the man. Kriff, he wished the dude would take his helmet off.

“And Sarah?” he prompted.

“Proved her worth.”

Marrek sat back with a grimace.

“Yeah. She told me something about that,” he admitted gruffly. The child had started to squirm in Din Djarin’s hold, wanting to be put down, and the Mandalorian ordered him to be still. He got raspberried at for his efforts, but the kid did settle. Mostly. Something tightened in Marrek’s chest, and he  _ knew _ he couldn’t blame it on the child. Not directly, anyways. He knew what the invasive, alien touch of the Force felt like, and this wasn’t it.

Marrek didn’t want to cave.

The kid turned to look at him with wide, glossy eyes, and drooped, sad-face ears.

Marrek  _ really _ didn’t want to cave.

Grogu sighed gustily, and flopped limp in his protector’s arms, giving up.

Marrek caved.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kriff - I don't know what language this is in the Star Wars cannon, but it's a pretty common "stand-in" for swear words.


	11. The Trial

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If this posts today... I guess you get a rare triple-chapter day. I figured I'd try to see if I could set it to auto-updoot since I happened to get another chapter edited and refined today, and I might forget to post tomorrow since I'll be busy with work.
> 
> Either way... Enjoy!
> 
> Edit: Welp that didn't work. I probs won't update for a few days as I am trying to keep well ahead of published chapters in new-content I write; that way, if I need to go back and tweak something, I have some chapters buffering the space so I can improve and fix stuff.

Sabine led the way through the Covert, and those they passed had the sense not to get in her way, though several clearly wanted to. Din Djarin’s unusual companion kept pace with her brisk, long-legged stride, forced to take two steps to her every one. The girl had been silent since leaving the tent, but there was a ferocity in her eyes that Sabine knew well.

Though she felt it was something she should have recognized in her from the start, it had nothing to do with the fact Sarah was Force-sensitive.

Sabine knew what a cornered animal looked like, felt like. Both from personal experience and seeing the wildness in the eyes of others pushed into a life threatening corner.

And cornered animals could be dangerous.

She was still angry, and hurt, by Din Djarin’s omittance of this crucial detail. But those were feelings she’d have to address later.

She stopped in front of her own _vheh’yaim,_ and curtly ordered Sarah to wait outside as she brushed aside the flap and entered.

Her home was not conventional in its explosively artistic decoration, but for all the riot of color and the mess of paints scattered on a makeshift table to her right, her lodgings were sparsely furnished as the rest of the homes here were. A lantern, two boxes, her pallet, and a rod suspended from the ceiling over which she hung her gear at night.

She stopped at the longer of the two chests, and knelt before it with a shiver running down her spine. It had been so very long.

She popped the latches and folded back the canvas covering, and withdrew the topmost objects - two long rods of wood with reinforced metal cores, and leather-wrapped hilts. She shut the lid and left the tent, and found Sarah waiting exactly where she’d left her. The girl had been looking around the place, but now turned to scrutinize her with that unnervingly penetrating gaze of hers.

“Come,” she ordered simply, and led the way out of the camp.

It wasn’t until they were well past the boundaries of the Covert that the woman following her finally spoke.

“Where are we going?”

“Don’t ask questions.”

“Alright, then. I want to know where we’re going,” Sarah amended, making it a statement. Sabine’s smirk was hidden by her helmet.

“You’ll find out soon enough.”

Their boots crunched over dirt and short, scraggly grass. The terrain slowly became rockier, dirt giving way to larger pebbles strewn about, until at last they were largely walking on solid stone. In the shadow of the towering peaks of jagged gray rock that filled their view, Sabine stopped and examined the environment. She didn’t bother turning on her helmet’s sensor displays, already knowing full well the feedback would be too scrambled to be of any use to her this close to the mountains.

“There’s an abandoned mine shaft not far from here,” she explained, then started forward. Sarah was tense as she looked around, eyes darting quickly between the dark crevices that now surrounded them.

“I’m starting to suspect this is going to be some kind of dangerous fetch quest,” Sarah guessed. Sabine chose to answer the implied question.

“Not quite. The mines here are abandoned for a reason. They haven’t been delved in for generations.”

“My money’s on scary beasts.” There was wariness in her voice.

“I am taking you to the same place where I was once tested, many years ago. This is not the first time we have settled this valley.”

Sarah’s eyes had a new curiosity to them, but Sabine offered no more elaboration.

The ground beneath their feet abruptly slanted upwards, and Sabine had to lean forward to keep her balance. The path was winding and treacherous, with loose scree that slid free beneath their boots. Sarah tripped more than once, and Sabine watched dispassionately as the woman caught herself on hands and knees and scrambled back up to regain her footing. She had taken to tucking her skirt up in the waistband of her pants to keep the fabric from tangling her legs. She didn’t complain, she didn’t ask for help, and she didn’t fall far behind.

They reached a portion of their climb into the foothills where it was impossible to continue walking, and Sabine took a sharp left to bring them face-to-face with a vertical wall of rock.

“I’ll meet you up top,” she said, and without giving Sarah time to answer stepped up with her knee and shot into the air as her jetpack heeded her command. She looked down to see the woman’s reaction - Sarah watched after her with a frown and hard, furious eyes.

It wasn’t a far climb, but it would be grueling. Sabine wasn’t certain if the young woman would be able to make it, and some twenty feet up she landed on the level plateau. Comfortable, she sat down and draped her legs over the edge, resolved to wait.

~*~

Sarah was conflicted.

On the one hand, she found herself _wanting_ to impress these people, to be seen as someone respectable and worthwhile. Trustworthy. She wanted them to accept her. On the other, she recoiled at the idea of putting herself through something just because she’d been challenged to. What did it matter what Sabine or Marrek or the others thought of her? Her secret was out, and there was nothing to stop the bard from flapping his mouth to everyone in the Covert. By the end of the day she’d be regarded as more than just an _auretii,_ an outsider. She’d be regarded as a freak, a dangerous threat.

And there, she supposed, was the problem.

Aside from the obvious complications of if they decided she was someone they needed to do more with than just send away, Sarah simply didn’t want to be thought of like that. She didn’t want to be cast out, and she didn’t want her reputation here to backlash on Din Djarin and make his life more complicated than it already was.

And if Sabine was willing to offer her a way to avoid that rejection, Sarah found she was willing to take it.

She wanted to prove to this woman and the others that she could be trusted, if only because Sarah knew she was reliable. Yet, it wasn’t enough to tell them she wasn’t going to turn on them, and say she had all the best intentions in the world.

She had to _show_ them that.

So she stared at the steep rock face in front of her, and flexed her fingers. Sabine’s silent challenge felt mocking. She didn’t know how to climb a sheer rock wall, even if it had an obvious array of handholds and cracks she could use. She wasn’t even certain if she had the stamina to pull herself all the way to the top.

Sarah closed her eyes and breathed deeply, and struggled to find her inner calm amidst the turmoil whirling away inside.

Climbing the rock wasn’t her challenge - getting to the top was.

Sarah turned a slow circle around herself to take stock of her environment. Jagged peaks rose on every side, most with sharp edges she wasn’t even going to pretend she’d be able to scale. Her hands would be shredded in an instant.

She walked a circle in the small crevice that had led them to this point, then retraced their steps.

Nothing. No hidden trail, no clever path of climbable rocks she could scramble up, no vines or growing things to use as handholds.

She walked back and faced the wall. It was so abrupt, direct and mocking her, an impossible obstacle planted in her way.

Sarah hated dead ends.

She put her hand to the stone, felt its texture. It was cold, though surprisingly dry. Either the rains hadn’t come this far, or it had seen enough sun exposure to evaporate the damp.

She tested a likely handhold, then dug her toes into a crack and lifted, muscles straining as she started her way up.

She made it three feet before her hand slipped, and she was sent sliding down the rock face. She landed on her feet then stumbled backwards, and managed to keep from falling flat on her rump. Angry, Sarah resisted the urge to kick the wall.

She risked a glance up. Sabine still sat there, mocking in her cheery colors and her silence, legs idly kicking back and forth.

Resisting the urge to ask for help which she knew wouldn’t be welcomed, she grit her teeth and tried again.

 _“Kriff!”_ she cursed in a snarled hiss as she slipped at the same height as before, this time thanks to her skirt slipping free and fouling her footing, and landed hard on her feet. Her palms stung from being scraped during their hike and now from trying to scrabble up the wall, and Sarah threw herself back into her task with a ferocity she wasn’t used to feeling. She _would_ do this.

Fifteen minutes later, Sarah was laying flat on her back as she stared up at the sky, a bloody streak on her face where her jaw had scraped against a stone protrusion on her most recent fall. She had managed to make it halfway up this time, and had felt the taste of success.

She’d definitely celebrated too soon.

Sabine leaned forward on her knees and looked down at her, inscrutable in her painted armor.

“Give up?” the woman asked, taunting.

 _“No,”_ Sarah growled, but her passionate answer was at war with her tired limbs and sore muscles.

“Why not use the Force to just jump up?” the woman asked.

“Use the Force to _what?”_ Sarah replied, dumbstruck.

“Jump up. I’ve seen Jedi do it before all the time.”

“You’ve met Jedi?” Sarah asked despite her reluctance to be diverted from her frustration. She pushed herself up and stood, then dusted her hands off on her shirt.

“Several. I was trained by one in my youth.”

Sarah did a fast double-take.

“Are… You a Jedi?”

“No.”

“I don’t know how to do that,” Sarah said after a moment, thinking on the woman’s suggestion. Sabrine crossed her arms, vambraces clicking.

It gave Sarah an idea.

“Better figure something else out, then,” Sabine said.

“Are you going to shoot me if I use the Force?” Sarah questioned as she watched the woman’s movements.

“Are you going to use it to try and hurt me?”

“No.”

“Then probably not, no.”

Sarah thought back to her most recent fight - the sensation in her hand as the energy flooded through her body, out her arm, and had sent the explosive charge skating back along the floor of the Razor Crest. She had acted without thinking at the time, and her instinct had saved her life.

Sarah was vaguely familiar with the Mandalorian armor from her time spent observing Din Djarin, and she had watched how he’d both removed and donned his equipment.

Looking up at Sabine, Sarah extended her left hand towards the woman and focused, then drew on the power she barely understood yet knew she could touch, could reach out and shape to heed her call.

 _‘I can do this,’_ she thought, and exerted her will over it, visualizing clearly what she wanted to happen in her mind’s eye as her senses reached out, searching, stretching.

Sabine stiffened where she sat, and Sarah saw her hand twitch towards one of the blasters on her hip, but the warrior otherwise did not move.

Sweat beaded her brow.

Just as Sarah thought she might not succeed, she cast the thought off and threw all her focus into it. She was _not_ going to give up!

Sabine was as startled as Sarah was when there was a soft metallic click, and the woman’s left vambrace unlatched and flew off her arm. Sarah barely managed to catch it before it would have wholloped her in the face, and the sharp edges of the metal dug painfully into her hands. 

Triumph had never felt so sweet.

As the Mandalorian jumped to her feet, probably in alarm, Sarah clasped the thing onto her own forearm and extended her wrist, then flexed.

At first nothing happened, and then with a grunt of frustration she tried again, and this time, a grappling line shot out of its nested spool and sunk its barb deep into the stone ridge.

Elated, and halfway lightheaded from her efforts, Sarah shifted her weight and cued the device to retract.

“GAH!”

She wasn’t prepared for it to haul her off her feet with such force. She crashed into the stone wall, and was unceremoniously dragged up its surface until the cable drew within an arm’s length of distance and stopped itself. Her arms and knees and everything hurt, scrapes cut into the fabric of her clothes, and her shoulder was on fire.

Sabine was laughing at her.

Sarah growled, and struggled until she found her footing, heaving for breath. She was still a few feet from the top of the wall. With the toes of her boots dug into a crevice and straining over a small ridge, she used her free hand to grab the cable and begin hauling herself up. When her hand was fisted right next to the metal barb sunk deep into the stone, she tested her weight, then hauled on it as she jumped up with her legs and reached for the ridge with the hand wearing her stolen equipment.

For a split second, Sarah’s world turned in slow motion.

She felt the pop and click of the vambrace as the cable’s cord released and jerked free of the stone, and for a moment she was suspended in mid air with nothing between herself and the fall that awaited her.

Her hand grabbed the ledge and she slammed flat-bellied against the stone with a breathless _oof,_ and dangled there for several heartbeats before she strained to haul herself up to reach with her other arm. Once both hands had a firm hold, Sarah pulled herself over the edge and rolled over onto her back, panting.

Sabine crouched at her head, and removed her helmet so Sarah could see her face. She was smirking down at her. Her pristine features unmarked by sweat or grime made Sarah feel even more a mess than she already knew she was. The slight helmet hair Sabine’s otherwise stylish cut had wasn’t quite enough to make her feel better.

Sabine held out a hand and made a beckoning motion. Sarah held her arm up without a word, and watched as the woman divested her of the equipment and returned it to its rightful place.

She was surprised when she was offered a hand up, and accepted.

“Please tell me I don’t have to do anymore climbing,” Sarah wheezed. It took her a moment to steady herself, and she stretched her back with a grimace, bones popping loudly.

“I’ll neither confirm nor deny that,” Sabine said, then laughed at the horrified expression Sarah knew crossed her face.

“Take five?” she begged.

“Nope. I made a promise to have you back by nightfall, and that took you forever to figure out.”

Sarah bristled. She was rather proud of the accomplishment.

“It’s not my fault I wasn’t born a goat or that I don’t own a jetpack,” she retorted.

“This old thing? I learned to scale walls and pull my own weight around long before I earned the right to wear it, and I can still get by without it. It’s just convenient,” Sabine said with a wink, then put her helmet back on. “Come on, we need to make up for the time lost,” she declared, and struck off across the rocky span at a light jog.

Sarah groaned, then took off after her, every bone in her body rattling with each jarring step.

The space Sabine had led her to turned out to be an old road. She could see the tool marks carved into the rock face, and the path was too level and uniform to be natural. It wound in lazy curls around the side of the mountain, sometimes only wide enough for them to walk single-file, while at other stretches it spanned the length of several yards. She wondered where the road began, for they’d obviously joined up with it partway.

As they drew nearer to their destination, something pricked at the edges of Sarah’s awareness, until she finally came to an abrupt halt. The air had grown thick and heavy with an oppressive weight, a familiar energy blanketing the summit. Sabine turned to look over her shoulder.

“Come on.”

“You don’t feel that?” Sarah asked, wary. There was a pause before Sabine answered.

“I do, though not as strongly as I suspect you might. Keep moving,” she ordered, and struck off.

Newly unsettled, Sarah obeyed.

Sabine finally stopped in front of an opening carved into the stone face of the mountain. The road continued on until it vanished around a bend, and the sun did not reach them here, sheltered as it was on three sides by the imposing terrain.

“What is this place?” Sarah asked as she stared into the dark depths of the cave with a sense of foreboding. She did _not_ want to go in there.

“A place that happens to be strong with the Force from generations of use. It may have begun as a mine, but it became something else over time. This place was once delved by the natives of this land, and later, they and the Jedi each used it to put their youth through a test.”

“I’m not a Jedi,” Sarah pointed out, though this time, it came out as a question.

“No, you’re not. You’re not of the Jedi, you’re not of the _Mando’ade,_ and yet you’ve got one foot in each door. Enter, and choose your path.”

“Wait. How is this going to prove you can trust me? Are you hoping I pick your side or something?”

“It won’t, though if you don’t come out alive, I won’t have to worry about that will I? _This_ is to see if it’s even worth my time to bother with you.”

“Everything is telling me I shouldn’t go in there. I trust my instincts,” Sarah hedged, and noted that the woman avoided her other question.

“Are you a coward?” Sabine challenged. Sarah clenched her jaw.

“No.”

The Mandalorian gestured to the ominous maw of the cave with a graceful sweep of her arm. The shadows looked ready to swallow her whole.

Sarah steeled herself, and against all her better judgement and the warnings which screeched against her senses and told her to turn back, she strode into the dark.

~*~

Sabine watched the woman enter the cave with lips pressed together in a grim line, then looked up towards the sky. There was no telling how long this would take; it could be minutes, it could be hours. Her own test had been grueling, and had lasted well over an hour before she’d been released from the clutches of the omnipresent powers that lurked here, saturating the air in a palpable weight. She could feel it tingle against her skin, just the faintest brush that warned her this place was something other than what it appeared to be.

She slung the practice swords she’d brought with off her back, and mused that she wouldn’t be able to put Sarah through a training session with them as she’d been thinking to do. It had taken a lot out of the younger woman just to get herself to this point, and Sabine didn’t want Din to accuse her of breaking his clanmate.

Besides, the trial she’d sent her off into would serve well enough for today.

Satisfied, she set the spare sword aside, and took her stance.

As she flowed through the elegant forms taught to her so many years ago in preparation to wield a lightsaber of her own, Sabine lost herself to movement and to memory.

~*~

The shadows consumed her, and Sarah wished she had some source of light to draw on. The floor beneath her feet was smooth, and as her eyes adjusted to the dim lighting, she glanced back behind her. Sabine stood outside, silhouetted against the warm and cheery daylight of which only the ambient glow of reached into this spooky place.

In the next instant, what little light there was vanished and Sarah was plunged into absolute pitch black. She stumbled as she lost her bearings, then planted her feet and stood as she panted for breath, heart hammering.

The dense air smelled of damp stone and something metallic, and Sarah felt her senses screaming at her of danger, of impending doom.

All at once, she could see a light.

She took a step towards it, wanting to run, to flee into it, and stopped. She saw the light ahead, but it felt distant, unreal, and she knew it to be an illusion. It was not the way she’d entered here.

The light vanished, and Sarah felt at once assured she had avoided something nasty, and panicked because now she was back in the dark again and clueless as to what she was expected to do now.

At that thought, the room around her shifted until she felt the walls closing in and the air growing stale and dark, claustrophobic. It pressed in on her, crowded into her space, and Sarah felt panic rise up. She could hear something slithering over the floor, then felt the reptilian weight of something sleek and heavy glide over her boots.

She yelped and jumped back, and then all at once she was falling, falling, spiraling into the darkness. She clenched her eyes shut, and when she opened them, found herself on hands and knees, her recent injuries aggravated.

She felt eyes upon her, all around her, and in the darkness they opened, wide and luminous. Their gazes bored into her, searching, probing, making judgements.

 _“You’re not ready,”_ a voice asserted, taunting.

_“She’ll never measure up.”_

_“You left them behind. You leave them all behind. Why bother now?”_

“Who are you?” Sarah demanded as she scrambled to her feet and drew her pistol. She fired at one of the sets of eyes and it vanished with a blink.

 _“Who are you?”_ another voice threw the question back at her.

Sarah tightened her grip on the gun, as sweat dripped down the back of her neck and plastered loose strands of hair to her face. She didn’t answer.

 _“Do you even know?”_ the voice pressed, sounding closer. _“I do. You are no one. Inconsequential, unwanted, unneeded--”_

“Stop!” Sarah cried, and fired three quick shots into the darkness. The eyes blinked out of existence, and she was left alone, quivering. She had to get out of here.

 _“Coward,”_ the first voice purred, right next to her ear. _“I can feel your fear. Should I show it to you? Do you want to see?”_

“No,” Sarah retorted as she whirled.

But they intended to show her, anyways.

Before her eyes a scene took place, familiar and unwelcoming, and from another vantage point than she’d first witnessed it. She knew this, because she looked upon herself. She was ten years old, sitting on the ground beneath a tree, and crying. Her parents had been shouting at each other, and the fight had scared her. She’d fled the house, and there she sat, lonely and afraid.

Sarah’s heart felt like someone squeezed it in a vice grip. She remembered this day well.

It was the day her father had abandoned them. He had simply left - no goodbye, no final word of parting to her, just loaded up what belongings he cared about and vanished after he’d finished arguing. Her mother hadn’t seemed surprised, only furious and hurt, but it had hit Sarah hard. It was the first time someone had abandoned her.

She watched the scene as the hover-cart wobbled in the air, lurching and jostling the boxes set on it as the creature that pulled it fidgeted, eager to be off. A door creaked open from somewhere outside of her view. Sarah’s throat went dry.

“Daddy!” she heard herself cry, voice small and frail.

Without thinking Sarah reached out, yearning to offer comfort to the child she had been, while she also felt the rising anger as she saw her father step into view. He strode past his daughter without a second glance, face hard and eyes cold and blocked off.

He climbed up onto the cart, snapped the reins, and did not look back.

Sarah couldn’t watch anymore. She closed her eyes and felt the hot sting of tears drip down her cheeks, and listened to the sound of tiny bare feet as they pounded over the dirt track. She remembered chasing after him, how she asked where he was going, why he was leaving, how she’d pleaded for him to stay. How she’d begged for him to take her with.

When she opened her eyes, the scene before her rippled, then changed.

This time she did not watch a memory as an outside spectator. She stood as herself in a crowded city lane, packed with people, being jostled this way and that as they paid her no heed. She fought her way free of the press of bodies and smells and sounds, until she came to stand on the sidelines. A merchant’s stall awaited her there.

“Sarah! Welcome home,” her mother greeted, all warm smiles that never quite reached her tired, wan, silver eyes. Her wavy hair was long and black, and flecked with spurts of silver that were more from stress than age, and she looked just as Sarah knew her to have been the last time she’d seen her so many years ago. “It’s been too long since you’ve come home. How have you been, love? You look exhausted.”

It took a moment for Sarah to remember this wasn’t real - it _couldn’t_ be. Her mother didn’t travel to the markets anymore.

But it felt real.

Her mother frowned at her.

“Sarah? What’s wrong?”

“I--”

“Come inside and sit, your father will be back soon, he’ll be so happy to see you.”

“Father?” Sarah croaked, then remembered. No, not her father. Her step-dad. Her mother stepped around the booth strewn with various wares, from salvaged mechanical parts to finely crafted leather bags, shoes, and more unusual things like packed spices, bound herbs, and polished stones. A small tray held a flat of familiar jewelry.

Sarah let herself be coaxed behind the counter, and sat down stiff and uncomfortable and feeling just as out of place now as she had all the other times her mother brought her with to the markets. It was one thing to know the sales skills and exercise them - it was another thing to feel comfortable doing it.

She had always preferred bartering for the things she wanted over being stuck behind a table, waiting for someone to come by.

“So much has happened since you left.”

“This isn’t real,” Sarah blurted, uneasy as guilt squeezed her guts. Her mother did a startled double-take. _‘Not my mother,’_ Sarah thought desperately. It wasn’t. It couldn’t be.

Could it?

“Isn’t real..? Sarah, sweetie, that makes no sense. Tell me what’s bothering you. You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Sarah jumped up from her chair. It fell back with a clatter, and now her mother looked at her, afraid.

“Sarah…?”

She took a step back, then another. This wasn’t right.

“Sarah, you’re frightening me.”

“As you should be frightened by her,” someone interrupted. Sarah whipped around to see the face of a man she’d never expected to see again. “She’s a freak.”

“My daughter is _not_ a freak! How dare you--”

 _“Mom,”_ Sarah started as she stared at the visitor, frozen in place. Words lodged in her throat, and in her silence, he continued to speak.

“I know you’ve seen it. How people watch her. They know she’s different, even if they don’t know why. She fooled me - she’s fooled you. Search your feelings,” he explained as he walked around the table in slow, measured strides. He was taller than her, as most men were, with broad shoulders and a narrow frame. His tanned face was mature with a touch of uncanny youthfulness she recognized as a nod towards this being a constructed memory.

Rhett Vass, a childhood friend she’d grown up alongside, and later, one of her longest lasting relationships.

Why was she seeing him here, now?

“She’s more than she pretends to be,” he accused.

Sarah found a wall at her back as she was caged in by the market stall’s three tables, and her long-time ex now blocked the short gap beside the building which led into their little booth. He leaned a hip against it, crossed his arms, and looked at her with an anguished expression.

“I loved you, and it was all a lie.”

“No,” Sarah whispered. She’d believed that, once. Had thought she’d tricked him into loving her, that she hadn’t been able to control her powers enough to stop herself. “No, no, it wasn’t-- Rhett, I swear, I didn’t-- I never--”

“I’ll tell her the truth,” he continued, eyes now looking at her with false pity. “Your mother deserves to know.”

“Tell me what truth?” he mother whispered, fear in her voice.

“She’s one of them. She’s one of the sorcerers who killed your family. I’ve _seen_ her use her powers.”

“That has nothing to do with this!” Sarah cried, desperate. He had seen? When? How?

“It has _everything_ to do with this!” he shouted at her.

And then, Sarah couldn’t tell that this was an illusion anymore. As his words struck a chord deep within her, her focus slipped.

Trapped, she could only watch the scene unfold around her, paralyzed by the terror that clawed its way free of the locked box she kept hidden deep within herself, dragged its icy nails across her flesh, and ripped her apart from the inside out.

“Is this true?” her mother whispered, looking to her with wide eyes.

“You’ve felt her power. She’s used it on you, you know,” the man said. “She used it to make me think that I was in love with her,” Rhett explained.

No. She hadn’t. She’d believed that once, had left home because of it, but over the years that had followed, Sarah had learned it wasn’t so.

Was it?

Suddenly, everyone in the market place was looking at her, their eyes accusing and suspicious.

Sarah’s heart hammered. Her vision was going blurry, and she felt lightheaded. She was hyperventilating, she realized, and yet she couldn’t quite master herself enough to stop, to take a breath and calm herself.

Her mother’s expression changed.

“You’re one of them,” she breathed.

“They aren’t all evil!” Sarah protested. They weren’t. She wasn’t.

“The Sith and their Imperial dogs murdered my sister, my mother - Everyone I cared about and loved! Alderan was all their doing!” her mother yelled, voice choked and crackled from emotion. Anger, hurt, betrayal. Sarah saw it all unfold over her mother’s face.

“I’m _not_ one of them!” Sarah cried, desperate. “I would never--”

“Never use your powers for your own selfish gain?” Rhett cut in acerbically. “You’re not _that_ moral. I know you.”

Something in the atmosphere shifted, and all at once Sarah was aware of a _presence._ It jarred her memory, but she was too distraught to recognize it, and Rhett was walking towards her now, eyes hard flints of steel. He seemed older, his muscles filled out with an undeniable strength she didn’t recognize granting an eerie grace to his movements. He was an impossible distraction, someone she had loved, and cared for, and had abandoned.

Just as her father had abandoned her.

 _“So this is what you fear,”_ he whispered, low and sweet and haunting, with an uncharacteristic glee lacing his tone. It took Sarah a moment to recognize that the presence she felt was coming from _him,_ wrapped about Rhett like a thick cloak. Something indefinable had shifted. “I will forgive you,” he announced, then reached to take her hand. Sarah let him, if only because she was too terrified to move. His fingers were pleasantly warm against hers. She remembered those hands, conjuring beautiful artistic creations of glass and stone and metal in the quiet of his jewelry workshop, the same hands that had once made her shiver with want and cry in pleasure.

Hands that held her now, tenderly, lovingly. Hands she didn’t want to touch her, had not wanted for many years.

“I will forgive you,” he repeated, eyes searching hers, pleading. “If you promise to do something for me, first.”

“Wh-what is it?” she whispered hoarsely, before she could stop herself.

“I miss you,” he admitted, and rubbed a thumb over the back of her hand. “Let me come to you.”

“What?” Something didn’t feel right.

“Tell me where you are,” he tried again, and Sarah felt something oily and insidious press against her mind, probing, seeking. “We can be together again, you and I.”

Sarah ripped her hand from his and side-stepped along the wall.

This wasn’t Rhett. This was an illusion, it wasn’t real, and even if it was, she didn’t want it!

“Sarah--” he began, as darkness flooded his eyes.

He reached for her, and Sarah was slammed with recognition as the movement jogged her memory of another, more recent meeting. They had wielded the power of lightning, had held the red lightsaber that he’d sunk into her shoulder.

Something inside her snapped.

“Get away from me!” she screamed as she threw her hands out, desperate. The power of the Force rocked through her like a cresting wave that crashed down and smothered her, drowned her in the wake of its flood. The table in front of her was smashed to pieces as Rhett was sent flying back into it.

“Monsters!” someone cried.

“Freak!”

“You’re one of them,” Sarah’s mother whispered, as Rhett picked himself off the floor with anger and hatred burning in eyes she had once loved to lose herself in. Eyes that had once looked at her with care and kindness and a cherished warmth.

Sarah stepped back, horrified. She did not recognize this man anymore. What had happened to him?

“Yes, she is,” Rhett spat, and wiped his mouth off on the back of his hand. Blood dribbled from a tiny cut. “She and I are just the same.”

“I’m not one of you,” Sarah whispered, then turned and fled.

“Sarah!” he called out to her, but she didn’t look back. As she vaulted over the top of the other table and hit the ground in a dead run, the scenery wavered and shifted, and she ran into darkness.

When she saw the light bloom before her, Sarah ran for it with all her might. The mouth of the cave loomed not far ahead, and she could smell the scent of fresh air, see the silhouette of the Mandalorian who waited for her at its entrance.

She burst into the light, panting, and found it wasn’t Sabine who waited there for her, but Din Djarin. He stood with arms at his side, the sun glinting off the matte finish of his armor. She had never been happier to see him.

“Sarah,” he greeted warmly, relief in his voice.

She all but threw herself at him, a sob caught in her throat. He seemed startled, and after a moment of delay, his arms came to wrap around her.

“Are you alright?” he asked. “I was worried. You’d been gone too long.”

“No, no-- I’m not alright,” she admitted, eyes closed against the light her eyes had yet to adjust to, her recent terror still fresh in her mind, old scars reopened.

“You’re safe now,” he promised.

A hand came up to cup her cheek, and lifted her head from his chest. She couldn’t see his eyes, but she met his gaze through the horizontal bar of his visor.

And Sarah _knew._

She was still trapped. This wasn’t real.

“Where’s Grogu?” she whispered.

“He’s right here,” not-Din answered, and Sarah looked down to see him waddle up to her on the stone plateau, little hands reaching.

Sarah felt bile rise in her throat.

“This isn’t real,” she whispered hoarsely. “Neither of you - You’re not real!” she cried as she jerked out of his arms, and stumbled back. “What is this? Let me out of here!”

As if her request had been heard, the scenery around her changed yet again, and Sarah’s vision went dark.

She jolted awake moments later, and found herself comfortable and warm, in some dimly lit room. As her eyes adjusted, she recognized the interior of the Razor Crest’s hull. She lay on her pile of blankets, Grogu curled up and tucked against her waist, sound asleep. Someone else was next to her, and a shiver ran over her skin as she looked, and saw.

Her breath caught in her throat. Din Djarin lay on top of the blankets, divested of armor, dressed only in black pants. His broad chest was bare to her eyes, and she could only just make out the lines of scars over the ripple of hard muscle.

Her eyes trailed from his hips up the lean torso, past his collarbone, and stopped at his neck. His face was turned away from her, and in the dark, she could not see his features. Just the edge of his chin, a glint of light off a strong jawline and clean-shaven skin. If she looked closer, she knew she’d be able to make him out.

Curiosity pawed at her, sharp and demanding. What did he look like?

She knew she held affection for him. It was too new to know what it might become, what it might mean to her. She knew so very little about this man, though of what she did, she liked.

She pushed herself up onto an elbow and reached out, then hesitated as she recalled herself.

This wasn’t real.

Sarah closed her eyes.

It didn’t matter to her. What he looked like - There wasn’t any chance between them, anyways.

Rhett’s face flashed across her mind and she gasped, alarmed, frightened he might intrude again upon this nightmarish visionary experience. She didn’t want him, especially not now.

Din Djarin stirred.

“Sarah?” he asked groggily. Her stomach flipped at the sound of his voice, and then suddenly he was pushing himself up as she averted her eyes with effort. He gathered her into his arms. “What’s wrong?”

Grogu grumbled at being disturbed, wriggled to be more comfortable, then fell back into sleep.

“Let me go,” she whispered, throat constricted. Her head was tucked under his chin, cheek pressed against his chest. His scent and the radiating warmth of his body enveloped her.

“I can’t do that,” he answered. “You belong here.”

Sarah closed her eyes.

_‘Not real, not real, not real, not real…’_

She could hear his heartbeat. She could _feel_ his heartbeat.

A broad palm rubbed soothing circles on her back, and despite her best efforts, Sarah felt herself start to relax into the comfort she so desperately craved.

“I wanted you,” he murmured, jarring her memory of the first time he’d said that to her. Her breath hitched as he bowed his head, whispered in her ear. “I still do. Do you want me?”

“I…”

Sarah had had enough of this. She ripped herself free of his grasp and stood, chest heaving. His face was shadowed, indistinguishable, yet still she averted her gaze from him. She _knew_ this wasn’t right.

And she wasn’t going to be tricked into confessing feelings she wasn’t even sure about herself, and certainly not to anyone less than the real person. Illusion. This _wasn’t_ real.

Yet she knew aspects of it were. Rhett’s intrusion had been real enough. How could she have been so blind? All her efforts of self-study and hard earned experience, all her discussions and lessons with Din Djarin of how to combat her tricks, to recognize what was happening and defend against it. How to divine the base truth beneath exaggeration, misdirection.

Was she not even going to use her own advice?

She was _not_ powerless. Especially not here.

Sarah turned away from them both and focused on finding herself back to where it was she needed to be, where she needed to go.

A light opened before her in mid-air, an arched doorway she could not see beyond for its brilliance, and Sarah stepped into it with purpose.

She almost screamed in frustration when it was clear she still was not yet free, yet she reined in her anger. She knew this place. She had been here before.

Grandmaster Yoda sat on his stool in the otherwise empty chamber, and watched her with those wise and dark, glittering eyes. Sarah clenched her jaw and stood before him. He did not look very pleased to see her, nor did he look overly surprised.

“Are you here to judge me next?” she demanded. She could feel herself shaking, her breaths still shallow and far too fast.

“Much anger, you have,” he said after a long, terse silence. “And much fear, yes - Much fear.”

Sarah strode forward into the room and looked down at him. After a moment, she sat down on the bare floor with crossed legs. Yoda’s presence suffused the room much as it had the last time she’d met him, and it was a welcome change of atmosphere from recent ordeals.

For a time, they simply sat.

“Resist you do - the choice of path,” he said abruptly. Sarah realized she’d closed her eyes, and now opened them to meet his gaze. He sat just a little higher than eye level on his chair. “Refuse one, refuse the other. Know what you want, you do not,” he observed.

“I am tired of people telling me what I am or what I am supposed to be,” Sarah explained, not quite managing to keep the acerbic quality of her tone in check. She worked her jaw and watched as Yoda’s ears flicked back slightly, and he _hrmmm_ ’ed at her.

“Nothing I have to tell you, then. Yet wait you do. Why? Hrm? Why wait?”

Sarah blinked.

“I’m here.” That had to mean _something_ was supposed to happen, right?

“Yes, here. Why?”

She frowned. Didn’t he know why?

“I don’t know,” she confessed, and sighed. She just wanted this to be over with, and go to bed. She was so tired, physically, emotionally, and mentally. “I don’t want to be.”

“Hah! Leave you can, yes; leave.” He waved her off with a shooing motion.

Sarah recoiled from his casual dismissal, and Yoda raised both his ears at her reaction. He didn’t have proper eyebrows, but she saw the muscles of his face shift as he raised them. Somehow, he seemed to be smiling at her.

“Hah! Want something, you do - Or gone you would be. Bring you here I did not, keep you here, I do not. Brought yourself, you did.”

Sarah opened her mouth to protest, then slowly shut it. He was right. She could feel the truth of it.

But what was it she wanted?

Sarah did not know.

“Return you will, when answer that you can.”

“Wait!” Sarah cried, not ready to leave, even though just moments before she’d been stewing over her frustration over being trapped.

Except, she wasn’t. She could feel the resonance of that deeper truth within herself. She was free to go, if only she made the choice to.

“I… I want - I need guidance,” she blurted. “Training.”

“Mmm. Train you, I cannot. To the temple of Tython you must go; answers there you may seek.”

“The temple of Tython?” Sarah repeated. “Where is that?”

“In the Deep Core, where balance there is, of light and dark. Neither good, nor evil, only what is, and what may be.”

“Thank you,” Sarah murmured, not sure what else to say.

“Mmm. Go,” he said, sitting back on his seat as he managed to look down at her despite his only slight advantage in height. “Let the Force guide you. Trust in it, you must.”

Sarah stood, and she could feel the room beginning to fade around her as a rightness settled deep in her sore, aching heart that served as a balm against all she had endured.

“What of Grogu?” she questioned.

“The Child? Choose his own path, he will.”

And between one breath and the next, it was over.

Sarah opened her eyes where she sat on the cool ground, cross-legged, hands on her thighs in a meditative position. There was something intrinsically different about her surroundings that told her with unshakeable certainty that she was back in the real world, no longer trapped in the illusions of her mind. The air still hung heavy and thick with the oppressive weight of the strong concentration of the Force, and yet it no longer frightened her as it had when she’d entered. It was simply present, pressing down upon her, overwhelming her senses, yet didn’t elicit the alarm she had known before.

She moved to stand up only to pitch forward, and caught herself awkwardly on an elbow and her hand. Sarah’s muscles were sore and stiff, her joints ached, and she had no idea how long she had been sitting here for. She could feel damp air currents drifting around her, and turned around. She was not far within the cave - only just deep enough that she could still see the light from outside, yet it did not reach her.

She picked herself up off the ground and limped the first few steps until her hips stopped feeling like they’d been locked in a bad rotation.

As she stumbled out into the daylight feeling very much like death warmed over, Sabine looked up from where she sat with her legs stretched out in front of her, helmet on the ground beside her, and the wooden practice swords resting over her lap.

Sarah _really_ hoped the woman didn’t intend to bring her into a practice bout. She was at her limit.

“Took you long enough,” the Mandalorian chirped as she looked Sarah up and down. “So, what’d you see?”

Sarah stared at her.

“Much.”

“As talkative as ever. Well, glad to see you didn’t get yourself killed.”

“Could that really have happened?”

“Yes. This test pushes you to your breaking point, then beyond. Not everyone can face that strain.”

“Now what?” Sarah asked, and fervently hoped the answer was ‘go home and rest.’

“Now we head back.”

She stood and began walking off as Sarah watched, surprised she wasn’t being pressed for more details.

Mind made up, Sarah called for her to wait. Sabine stopped and turned to look back at her, eyebrow raised.

“I saw… Memories. Things that weren’t real. Things I wanted, things I feared,” she began softly. “I learned who’s been invading my dreams.”

“Wait. What?”

Sarah belatedly realized just how out of the loop Sabine was, and felt rather silly for the error. She described briefly the attacks she’d suffered in her sleep, first on the ship and later in the Tusken’s camp.

The woman’s expression had a gravity to it that reminded Sarah too much of her hard expression before she’d ordered her to come with from Marrek’s house.

“A _Sith?_ That’s no good.”

“No kidding,” Sarah said softly. She looked up to the sky and found that the sun hung with perhaps an hour, maybe two, worth of daylight left before it would vanish below the horizon. “He wants Grogu.” And possibly herself, though she couldn’t be certain of that.

“The Empire has a history of dealings with the Sith. I don’t think this is unrelated to the Imps who have been hunting him, but we’ll talk about that later. Let’s head back before your friend comes looking for you.”

“Please tell me I don’t have to climb down that rock face,” Sarah said as she fell into step with the older woman. Sabine laughed at her, then clapped her on the back. Sarah stumbled.

“No. I’ll take you down the easier path,” she said with a grin. Sarah wasn’t even surprised.

As the two of them descended through a steep, winding trail Sarah really wasn’t convinced was ‘easier,’ she thought over what she’d experienced.

She had learned a lot about herself.

And yet - something still nagged at her. It was almost ridiculous to be thinking about it in the face of everything else, but she couldn’t shake it off.

“Sabine… Do Mandalorians - Um. Do you guys… Have relationships?” she questioned. It was hardly clever, but she couldn’t think of any other way to phrase her query.

Sabine hopped down off a short boulder, then turned to look at her. Her helmet was back on so Sarah couldn’t be sure of her expression, but the feeling she got was of a mostly amiable disposition.

“Of course we do. Just not with anyone who’s _auretii.”_

“Oh.”

“Why, fancy someone?” Sabine teased. Sarah felt her cheeks heat.

“I-- I was just curious. Your culture is strange to me.”

“You know, I’m sure Din Djarin would be happy to satisfy your curiosity. You should ask him about it.”

Sarah planned to. Maybe.

After a time, Sabine spoke up again, and interrupted Sarah’s ruminations as she slid down a steep slide of loose rock and silt.

“Do you want to be part of the _Mando’ade?”_

“Is that Mandalorian?”

“Yes.”

“Why would you invite me in?”

“Who said I was inviting you?” Sabine asked, then chuckled at her expression. Sarah hadn’t expected to react so strongly to the jibe - her chest felt uncomfortably tight. “I’m kidding. It’s not as outlandish as you’re probably thinking. Mandalorians aren’t a race; we’re an idea, a culture. We live by certain standards and teach them to our children, and as often as not those children are adopted into the society. I was born on Mandalore, so I was raised in it from birth. And even now, my closest family aren’t related to me by blood. It’s not our way.”

“What would it mean? To be Mandalorian?”

Sabine stopped and turned to face her. She removed her helmet, and Sarah felt the woman’s scrutiny as she looked her up and down.

“It means something different to each who is, but if you’re asking what sort of thing it would entail - It’s a way of life. We keep our culture alive through the practice of speaking _Mando’a,_ the language passed down to us by our eldest ancestors. We wear our armor, both because it’s practical and because it unites us in image when so many of our kin are not of the same species. We defend ourselves and our family, and contribute to the community. We raise our children in our Way. These are the tenants of the _Resol’nare,_ the Six Actions. If another Mandalorian needs help, we provide it as we are able. Offering sanctuary, that sort of thing. It is a place of belonging.”

“What’s the sixth one?” Sarah asked, brows furrowed, not sure if she’d caught that correctly. Sabine smiled.

“If the _Mand’alor_ calls the clans together, we rally to their cause. They are the sole leader of the Mandalorian people. There has not been one in a long time, but that is a story for another night.”

“That’s… it?” Sarah asked. Sabine laughed again.

“Ours is a practical way of life, but no - There _is_ more to it than those things alone. Education; you would learn the songs of our history, how to survive and take care of not only yourself but those you are with. Come - we can talk more later.”

They passed the rest of their journey in a silence that was far more comfortable than the one they had set out in.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those wondering, Sarah's trial was largely inspired by the one Luke Skywalker faces when under the tutelage of Master Yoda. I love the idea of the visionary experiences for revealing things about a character, and forcing their growth... or showing their cowardice.
> 
> I might have also totally tweaked some of Sabine's specific history. It should be pretty clear by now she's really more of an AU variant.
> 
> Mando'a translations:
> 
> Vheh'yaim - "Earth House," see chapter nine's notes for more elaboration.
> 
> Auretii - "outsider" aka not a Mandalorian.
> 
> Mando'ade - Mandalorians word for themselves. (Mandalorian, basically)
> 
> Resol'nare - "Six Actions." The main tenants of what it takes and means to -be- a mandalorian, as Sabine gives a hasty run-down of in this chapter. I rather like my paraphrased version of "Badass, deadly supersoldiers with a soft spot for kids."
> 
> Kriff - Not a Mando'a word, but a Star Wars curse word.


	12. Merrymaking

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Who wants some feels?
> 
> I sure hope you do, because you're going to get them.
> 
> Enjoy, lovelies <3

Sarah had been both looking forward to, and dreading their arrival at Marrek’s hut. Sabine had confirmed from another Mandalorian as they entered the Covert’s boundaries that the two men were still holed up there. She expected to find a tense, dangerous atmosphere, and even vaguely thought she’d find them still in the same spots they’d left them in, squared off against each other.

So it was a bit of a shock when Sabine stepped up to the door frame to announce herself, and an unexpected noise greeted them.

Laughter.

Marrek’s was easy to pick out, boisterous and almost melodic in his higher-pitched voice, but the rich, carefree chuckles of his company had Sarah reeling.

Sabine turned to look over a shoulder at her with raised brows. She’d removed her helmet again, and now wore an expression caught between perplexed and amused.

“I thought for sure they were going to start a fight when we left,” Sarah whispered.

“Men,” Sabine answered with a shrug, then quietly drew the tarp aside and led the way in.

They weren’t immediately noticed, which Sarah found both surprising and mildly alarming. Marrek was sprawled on his side on the floor, propped on an elbow, boots off and decidedly disheveled looking, a tankard in his bare hand. He had a drunken flush to his high cheekbones, and an easy, lopsided smile on his face. He’d discarded his utility belt and gauntlets, sleeves rolled up to his elbows.

Din Djarin used the footlocker as a backrest, legs sprawled lazily out in front of him with one leg bent up, and shoulders slumped in the most relaxed posture Sarah had ever seen him in. He was mid-chug out of another cup, helmet tipped back and revealing no more of his face than the tiniest peep of skin on his jaw.

Both men had been, and Marrek still was, apparently laughing at the child they were babysitting, who Sarah quickly located; he was scurrying across the floor underneath Marrek’s helmet, babbling in what she was starting to think was actual attempts at speech rather than nonsensical noises. The mood in the room was powerfully felt for her, and an entirely welcome change from the recent flood of far more unpleasant atmospheres she’d been through. Not a trace of fear, anger, or dangerous tension to be had. Only joy, a deep, relaxed contentment, and humor.

“I just went through hell and back, worried I was going to come home to the results of a bloody brawl, and you two have just been sitting here merrymaking and  _ drinking?” _ Sarah asked, incredulous. Both men started badly, Marrek looking decidedly guilty as he quickly sat up and smoothed a hand over his hair. Din Djarin’s helmet dropped down his face cock-eyed as he spluttered his drink, and she imagined him to have a wide-eyed look under that mysterious visor of his. He sloppily wiped at his now dripping chin with a hand and held the mug far away from himself, as if to pretend he hadn’t been imbibing. His other hand clumsily straightened his helmet so he could see.

_ “Laaaaaadiesss, _ hello, hello! Care for a drink? Join us!” the bard offered, and tipped his mug at them. It was still half-full.

Sarah was distracted from watching Din Djarin struggle to pick himself off the ground when Marrek’s own helmet took a sharp turn to skid across the floor directly towards her.

She knelt and carefully lifted the thing off, and revealed a very happy looking Grogu, with crumbs on his face and sticky fingers. He burbled at her, and Sarah gathered him up.

“Right. Well, I’ll leave you to handle this. Marrek’s obviously gotten over his misgivings. Good luck, and don’t sleep with either of them,” Sabine said with a wave, then turned to leave.

“Wha--! Hey, wait a minute!” Sarah cried over Marrek’s ensuing guffaws and Din’s choked cough. What in the universe was she supposed to do with two drunk Mandalorians? And it definitely wasn’t going to be  _ that! _

“Aww goin’ already Sabby? Your no fun. Sarah, come and join us! Be merry, let loose, lighten up! We’ll show you a good time. You look like you could use it,” he invited, and hit the ground next to him in three slow pats.

“Bye, boys!” Sabine called as the tarp fell back into place, and Sarah was alone with them.

She stared at Din Djarin as he walked - well, stumbled - over to her, and both of his gloved hands came up to rest heavily on her shoulders as he steadied himself. One was wet from the drink he’d spilled and tried to wipe up. He wavered forward and back in time with his helmet as it dipped up and down in a dramatic sweep, clearly looking her over. “You look like a bantha’s second stomach pass,” he bluntly declared. Marrek chortled.

Sarah leaned back as he leaned forward, his helmeted face coming within a mere inch of her nose. He was so close, she swore she could see the faintest outline of his eyes behind the dark visor, illuminated from within by whatever technology he had on in the thing.

“I, uh-- You are  _ drunk,” _ Sarah observed, still in shock.

“I am not. I’m just… A little tipsy,” he slurred.

Marrek laughed, sharp and bright and greatly entertained.

“You were smashed after the first mug! For such a big guy you’re a  _ terrible  _ lightweight. I bet even  _ Sarah  _ could outdrink you,” he boasted, and sloshed his own cup with a wide gesture before tipping it back.

Sarah blinked owlishly at them, then took a deep, calming breath.

“Right. Let’s get you back to the ship,” Sarah said, and moved to tuck herself under Din’s arm. He let it drape over her shoulders, then leaned his full weight on her. Sarah nearly fell over as she was pushed off balance. “Woah! Hey, use your legs, idiot. Ow.”

“Awww don’t go, stay!” Marrek protested. “I ain’t mad at you anymore, not after what the big bucket here told me - I’m practically in love with you myself!”

Sarah caught the distinct spike of alarm and anxiety from Din Djarin, and she slowly turned her head to look over his shoulder pauldron at Marrek’s shamelessly smug expression. He hid it behind another swig from his cup.

“...What did he say?” she asked.

“Stay and I’ll tell you!” the bard bartered, then winked.

“No, no, we’ll… go. Let’s go, we should go,” Din interrupted, and tried to walk from her to the door. Sarah caught him by the back of his cape and yanked, and was both amused and concerned to find that it  _ worked. _ He stumbled back half a step with a flail of his arms, until he steadied himself in a wide-footed stance. Sarah tightened her hold.

“I think we’ll stay.”

~*~

Din Djarin could count on one hand the number of times in his life he’d been drunk. Not buzzed, not tipsy -  _ drunk.  _ Each one had been a memorable experience, and each one had been largely regretted the next morning for ever happening in the first place. His first time had been when he’d been a young recruit in the fighting core, not yet of age, and had gotten into mischief with some friends. It had not ended well for them.

The next had been when he’d finally come of age, before he began the next Rites of passage, and his adoptive father had held a small celebration between just the two of them. That had been a more humble experience, talking long into the night with pleasantly relaxed muscles and largely carefree of the worries that pressed down on young shoulders. It had actually been rather enjoyable - it was the following morning and its accompanying hangover that had made him regret the revelry.

The last time he’d drank, it had been for the sake of a job. The client who’d hired him with a price he couldn’t turn down had demanded only one other thing; to share a drink to seal their deal. It was their custom.

He’d not been prepared for how strong the alcohol was, and it had quickly turned into a night he’d rather forget ever happened. Since then, though he occasionally indulged in a drink here and there, he was always very careful never to let it tip beyond the slightest buzz.

Until Marrek.

He wasn’t entirely certain when their terse, clipped one-liners had turned into free flowing conversation, but he had a vague suspicion it had something to do with the first cup of potent, sweet tasting, and throat-scorching  _ tihaar, _ Grogu’s antics, and questions about Sarah. Marrek was the sort of person who was easy to be disarmed by, and even easier to talk to… once they got past their differences, and the only way to do that had been to converse about them.

Now, with the woman in question hauling him bodily across the room by his belt, he was doubly glad for the Bard’s presence. Sarah had no idea what she was doing to him, but with another person here, things couldn’t get out of hand. She was still wearing her green dress that looked all too flattering on her lovely curves, and brought up dangerous memories of the first time he’d seen her wear it. It didn’t matter that it was in bad repair, or that she was in dire need of a shower. It didn’t matter that she had scrapes and bruises visible as testament to her recent ordeals, or that her wavy hair was stuck to her face and neck from dried sweat.

She was a hot mess with an air of danger about her, in the way she walked and in the way the gun harness he’d gotten her nicely framed her petite endowment.

A woman had never looked so attractive to him. It helped that he already admired her for her bravery and fierce tenacity; others might dismiss her at a glance as delicate looking, but he had witnessed her true strength.

Sarah let go of his belt, plopped down on the floor in the spot he had just vacated, and settled Grogu in her lap. His Foundling looked up at him with perked ears and a happy chirp that made his heart pound.

“Are you just going to stand there staring or are you going to sit?” Sarah asked as she carefully wiped the child’s face and fingers off on her skirt, and Marrek chortled into his mug.

Din Djarin tried to sit down carefully, but one moment he was crouching and the next he was falling backwards, his back thunking against the chest. Sarah let out a startled  _ “oof!” _ as his shoulder banged against hers and shoved her over. Feeling bad for knocking her around, he brought an arm up to put across her upper back and steady her. Fortunately, he hadn’t jostled Grogu out of her lap.

“Sarah...” he trailed off, intended apology forgotten. She had a pretty flush to her cheeks and a bright-eyed ferocity in her gaze he found dangerously alluring, and his eyes dropped to her lips.

Din Djarin blinked.

He needed to get it together.

“There is no way I am dragging your shiny butt through the entire Covert to get back on the ship like this,” Sarah announced.

That was fine. He didn’t really want to leave.

He realized after a moment that she hadn’t pushed him away, and seemed content to remain tucked up to his side under his arm. Din Djarin didn’t feel a need to remove it, and so instead adjusted his hold to be more comfortable and kept it there.

“Alright, bard. Fess up. What’d you two gossip about that got you all drunk and happy? I’ve  _ never _ heard Din laugh.”

Marrek burst out into amused chortles, and Din closed his eyes with a soft groan.

“Forget about it,” he urged her. She didn’t need to know.

“No, I definitely won’t. I need to have every possible piece of evidence to remind you tomorrow that this really happened.”

He didn’t want to think about tomorrow. Why did she have to bring it up?

“Apparently, you’re an absolute  _ beast _ of a woman, positively ferocious,” Marrek boasted. He had dropped back onto his elbows, empty mug forgotten on the floor. “You told me you killed those guys, but you didn’t tell me you did it by single-fire  _ headshots _ with a crappy handgun! While in the middle of the shitshow, might I add. Do you have any idea how hot that is to guys like us?”

_ “Marrek,” _ Din warned in a frustrated growl as heat flushed his face. Sarah had her head turned away from him, and so he couldn’t very well tell what her expression was, but he had the nagging sense she was embarrassed.

_ “And _ let’s not get started about the whole thing with--”

“Not in front of the kid!” Din interrupted, desperate.

“Apparently you  _ already _ talked about it in front of Grogu,” Sarah said, and suddenly he was entreated to her furious blue eyes. His throat went dry, and he felt his heart skip a beat.

“Nah, nah, that’s why we dropped the helmet on him. Kid loved it. He’s been bumping around the place for an hour.”

“I’m going to kill you  _ both _ in the morning, when you’re sober enough to realize what’s happening,” Sarah groused. 

“Now darling, don’t make threats you won’t uphold. So, what’d Sabby put you through anyways?”

Din caught Sarah’s immediate shift. She tensed beside him, and he tightened his hold on her by reflex.

“I’ll tell you about it tomorrow. Grogu, sweetie, I need you to go sit somewhere else while I get these two idiots settled for bed.” The child complied and scrambled off her lap, then waddled over to the central brazier where he plopped down and watched them all.

“Oh-ho!” Marrek cried and sat up with a grin. “Are you--”

_ “Don’t,” _ Sarah warned.

Marrek’s grin only widened as he waggled his eyebrows at her suggestively instead, and suddenly, Din wanted to punch him in his handsome face.

“Oi. Let go,” Sarah ordered as she jostled his arm off her shoulders. Din belatedly complied, then watched as she stood, movements stiff. “Marrek, give me directions - which way do I go from here to get back to the Razor Crest? I have some things I need to collect, not negotiable, and I can pick us up some bedding. I shouldn’t be long,” she said, tired and bone-weary. The orange armored Mandalorian fixed her with a long look.

“Nah, naaaah. Tell you what,” he said, and slapped his hands on his thighs. He lurched up to his feet, unsteady. “I’ll go grab us a ride to get his heavy ass back to your ship. You wanted to sleep there anyways, right? I’ve gotta swing by Mars and tell her about the change of plans anyhow. Woooooo she’s gonna chew me out. You two lovebirds don’t make a mess out of my  _ vheh’yaim  _ while I’m gone. Ten minutes, tops. _ ” _

“Wha- We’re not-- That’s--” Sarah spluttered. Din Djarin cleared his throat.

He didn’t bother to try and correct Marrek as the bard collected his  _ Woor Bes’bev, _ the weaponized lute-flute… thing, and vanished out the door.

He couldn’t find it in him to be mad at the bard anymore when Sarah turned and returned to his side, sat down next to him, and patted her lap to invite Grogu back over. The child complied immediately, and made short work of getting comfortable in the deep bowl of her skirt, leaned back against her tummy.

Din Djarin slowly put his arm back around her, and tried very hard not to think about how much he liked it.

~*~

Marrek was good on his word - he was back with a borrowed Landspeeder courtesy of Mars herself, who had made sure the tipsy bard wasn’t left alone with it. Sarah was more than happy to let the woman drive for them as she bid goodnight to Marrek, still reeling a little from how swiftly the dynamic of their budding friendship had changed over the course of the day. She hoped this good streak continued into tomorrow when he was sober enough to think straight again, because she wasn’t convinced he was.

Din Djarin didn’t fall asleep on the ride back, but she could tell he really wanted to. His head kept nodding forward before he’d jerk into a straight sitting position, then slowly begin to slump again.

Sarah herself was exhausted, and that was an understatement. She just wanted to get the boys taken care of so she could set her ward stones out and get to bed.

By the time they arrived, she was ready to nod off on the speeder.

Din got himself clumsily unloaded before Sarah could even think to help him, and Mars sped off with a cheery goodbye.

“Hey. Open the door,” she prompted, struggling under his weight with an arm over her shoulders and her own around his waist. Grogu waddled on his own two feet, and occasionally opened his mouth in a tiny yawn.

The helmet swung her way.

“Third button. Top row.” He held his left arm out to her, the one with the tiny control panel of buttons built into the vambrace. Sarah scrutinized it; every single one of them looked exactly the same. She pressed the button she figured it was, then jolted when Din Djarin’s jetpack abruptly  _ whooshed _ to life and sent them both stumbling forward. Grogu meeped at them while Sarah hastily shut the thing off, just as she felt his feet begin to lift off the ground. She staggered under his heavy bulk as it settled back onto her full force. “Wrong button,” Din observed.

“No kidding. This one?” she asked, and this time hovered her finger over it until he nodded a confirmation.

Once she’d gotten him on the ship and Grogu was safely on board, she propped the drunk Mandalorian up against the wall and hit the controls to close the door. Even as it shut, a cold draft continued to come in from the other end of the ship, where the back door had been blown open. Someone had put a tarp up over it to keep the worst of the weather out.

She looked in dismay at where her bed was - the chests were still arranged around it, but the debris from the explosion had caused a fine soot to cover a large portion of the interior of the ship, and her blankets were a mess. Small bits of sharp, twisted metal had been swept to the edges of the walls by whoever had started maintenance work, but her bed had been left untouched.

“Are you sleeping in this tonight or do you need help getting out of it?” Sarah asked as she turned away to walk over to Din. He still hadn’t moved from where she’d put him up against the wall, and when he didn’t immediately reply, Sarah waved a hand in front of his face. “Din?”

He jerked, and Sarah raised her eyebrows.

“Did… You just fall asleep while standing?”

“Might have.”

“So. Sleeping in or out of the armor?”

“In.”

“Figured. Come on, let’s get you to bed.”

She thought he might have protested her assistance, but when he took a step away from the wall and immediately listed sideways, Sarah reached out to steady him. He didn’t argue as she helped him shuffle over to the sleep chamber at the end of the room, though she caught him looking at the scorch marks which peppered it and the surrounding walls. Grogu followed them, and after she waited for Din to crawl onto the raised pallet, she scooped the child up and tucked him into his hammock. With the ship exposed to the cool evening air, she felt safer with him in the sheltered, enclosed space.

“Need anything?” Sarah asked, even though all she wanted to do was crash and go to bed herself. Maybe take a shower, first.

She was answered by utter silence; he’d fallen right back to sleep. Sarah huffed lightly, then shook her head with a smile.

“Idiot,” she murmured fondly. “See you in the morning. Goodnight, Grogu,” she added, and leaned forward to plant a kiss on his forehead. His eyes opened briefly to blink up at her, then he put a hand to her cheek for a moment before he let it drop, and snuggled into his blankets. With warm fuzzies in her chest now, Sarah stepped back and closed the door on them.

She put only as much effort as was absolutely necessary into arranging her sleeping quarters - it consisted mostly of picking up all the blankets and shaking them free of tiny bits of metal shrapnel and soot. She was disappointed yet not surprised to find that there were numerous holes burnt through the cloth; the damage was no doubt caused by the shower of sparks from blaster fire impacting the walls, but it would have to do.

She made quick use of the shower next, too tired to linger even to enjoy the luxury of hot, clean water, before she threw her pants back on and both of her shirts for good measure. By the time she’d finished, the temperature in the ship had dropped by several degrees, and Sarah quickly padded barefoot over the metal floor to her nest.

She curled up and bundled herself in the blankets, her ward stones safely set nearby, and prepared herself for an uncomfortable night’s sleep.

~*~

The first thing Din Djarin thought when he opened his eyes was that he was going to kill Marrek. The potent  _ tihaar _ had gone down with a fierce, welcomed burn he had enjoyed at the time, but now as its after-effects pounded against his skull, he was having second thoughts.

He slowly pushed himself up onto an elbow, not sure what had woken him. It felt early - much too early to be up, especially with the pounding headache and the last lingering buzz of alcohol still clinging to the edges of his awareness. He would have dropped right back to sleep if it weren’t for some nagging sense that something was wrong. Din rolled onto his back then sat up, and bumped the door’s button with a fist. The Razor Crest’s night-setting lights dimly illuminated the wreckage inside his ship.

Grogu stirred as a wash of frigid air invaded their cozy sleeping chamber, and Din launched himself out of the small space with a spike of alarm. Even through the thick insulated padding of his suit he could feel the chill, and where it touched against the slip of skin exposed under his jaw, it was ice cold.

He hit the door control to shut the Foundling safe inside the warm chamber, then rushed over to Sarah. She was curled up into a tight ball in the middle of her makeshift pallet, nothing but the tumble of her hair visible.

“Sarah.” He touched her shoulder and gave a light shake. When she didn’t respond, he shook harder. “Sarah! Wake up.”

She didn’t answer, and after turning the lights of the ship on, he tapped a button to activate the heat sensor built into his visor.

Sarah’s huddled form was a blob of pale yellow ringed with blue, and a tiny touch of orange warmth at the center. Din Djarin swore softly and shut the display off, then gathered the woman up in his arms, blankets and all. She didn’t stir as he carried her over to the ladder way, nor when he shifted her over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes.

His stomach churned nauseatingly with the strain of physical exertion, and his head throbbed in response to every little noise. When he cued open the blast doors that led into the storage room, they hissed open with a hollow  _ thud _ , and he resisted the urge to close his eyes and groan.

He barged into the room and shut the doors, then used his shoulder to open up the generator room. A wash of warm air, hot compared to the frigid temperature, rolled out over them as he stepped inside the cramped space. It was illuminated by a yellow bulb on dim settings, and blinking indicator lights of different colors dotted the space here and there.

He set Sarah down on the ground then closed them in. He’d already known what he’d need to do before he’d carried her up here, and he didn’t waste time with hesitation. One by one the pieces of his armor came off and were discarded in the corner, hasty without being careless. He stopped only once he had divested himself of all the metal covering his upper body, then flipped the blanket over Sarah’s face and pulled his helmet off.

With a grim expression he stripped down to his trousers, settled down on the ground, then gathered the young woman up into his lap as the blankets slid halfway off of her. Her lips were tinged darker than they should be, and there was an unhealthy pallor to her face. He shoved her bedding the rest of the way off and carefully divested her of both shirts, and had just enough presence of mind to be relieved to find she still wore her chest wrap.

Din Djarin leaned against the wall and adjusted her until her back was laid flat against his torso, her quivering skin shockingly cold. He pulled the blankets up to her chin and wrapped the fabric around them both, then stuffed the corners behind his shoulders to keep them in place. One of his arms circled around her waist to hold her steady and help warm her belly. He used his free hand to rub her arms down, to coax her circulation along and use the friction to speed up the warming process.

It felt like forever before she finally stopped shivering and he could be certain that the immediate danger had passed.

As Sarah slipped into a slumber that was no longer life threatening, Din finally felt himself relax. With the dire necessity over and her breathing steady and light, his mind was freed to ponder other things.

Like how soft her skin was.

Or how nice it felt to hold her, gathered up in his arms, safe and secure against his chest, with her head tucked under his chin. He had not laid bare eyes upon another person since the day he’d first accepted his helmet, and now that he could  _ see _ her, Din Djarin found he could not look away.

Her scent was the next thing he registered, soft and light and smelling of earthy things and some kind of sweetness that lingered around her, probably from whatever shampoo she used. Before he knew what he was doing, he had closed his eyes, buried his nose in her hair, and breathed in the smell of her.

Panic.

He drew back, breath hitched, throat constricted.

She was  _ much _ too close.

And yet, he couldn’t let her go. He could wake her up, tell her to go join Grogu in the protected sleeping chamber he should have put her inside in the first place, and he cursed his lapse of responsibility. He shouldn’t have indulged in drink. If he hadn’t, she wouldn’t be in this situation, because he’d have had the sense to consider the circumstances properly.

And he wouldn’t be holding her in his arms, skin-to-skin, as her scent muddled his thoughts and her soft, warm breaths puffed against his shoulder where her head lolled.

He should wake her up, don his armor, and send her back to bed.

He didn’t.

~*~

When Sarah woke, the first thing she thought was that she had not slept so well or so soundly in a very long time. She was warm and comfortable, with her blankets snugly tucked around herself. Strong arms were wrapped securely about her waist, and someone’s warm breath skated pleasantly along the exposed skin of her bare neck.

Starting badly, she jolted wide awake from her lazy, half-asleep state, and immediately the arms around her tightened. One shot up and clamped a hot hand over her eyes, and Sarah felt the rising pitch of Din Djarin’s emotional turmoil. She was pulled back flush against his chest, and she could feel the side of his jaw and cheek brush against her ear.

“What--”

“Hypothermia,” he interrupted, voice groggy and strained. Sarah swallowed thickly. “I had to get you warm. Grogu’s fine. I’m sorry,” he murmured.

Sarah only half understood what he was saying, too caught up in her shock at waking up wrapped in his warmth, and then listening to his voice speaking openly beside her ear. It was too much.

He didn’t immediately move to let her go, and Sarah didn’t rush to get up. She was still sore from yesterday, and there was a new ache in her limbs and joints she suspected was evidence of her apparent chill - not that she believed Din Djarin was lying to her. She was not only absolutely certain that this would not have happened under any other circumstances, but positive she’d have woken up if she’d been able to do so.

At least she didn’t have Rhett haunting her dreams again.

Like a needle jabbed at a bubble, memories of the previous day washed over her and ruined the pleasant parts of this moment, and Sarah groaned aloud. She didn’t want to face the day.

She felt her partner’s Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed thickly, and her stomach turned over in butterflies.

“...Thank you,” she said finally. It didn’t feel adequate.

“How do you feel?”

“Pretty awful, but nothing I can’t handle.”

“It’s early yet,” he said after a moment, voice soft. “Do you need more rest?”

Sarah opened her mouth to decline, ready to get up and start the day, and nothing came out.

She felt the heart at her back flutter.

“Rest,” he ordered simply. He shifted them until her head was tucked up underneath his chin, calloused hand still covering her eyes, and Sarah felt a blush creep up high on her face.

“Have you been up all night?” she whispered, afraid to break the quiet hush that surrounded them, and guiltily not wanting to risk the sound echoing to Grogu through the ship. Once the kid woke, she’d have no excuse to linger.

“...No,” he admitted.

With nothing else to say, Sarah slowly relaxed into him, and in short order, fell back asleep.

The next time she was pulled awake, it was because Din Djarin woke her, a hand over her eyes again. She’d missed what he had said, but that didn’t seem to matter.

“Morning,” she murmured.

“Get dressed.” The arm around her waist let go and pushed the blankets off of them, but his hand didn’t drop. “If you try to turn around, I  _ will _ shoot you,” he warned.

She believed him, especially with the way his aura spiked with a defensive anxiety.

“I won’t look,” Sarah promised, even though she  _ really _ wanted to. “This… This isn’t the first time I’ve almost seen your face.” He went rigid and tense, and Sarah immediately wished she’d kept her mouth shut.

_ “What?” _

She tried very hard to think about the fact his dangerous, rough growl should probably frighten her, not make her stomach flip.

“It’s - It was an illusion I was trapped in,” she hurriedly explained. “I’ll… I’ll tell you later. We’ve got a lot to discuss.” Utter silence fell between them.

“Pass me my helmet,” he said finally, then slowly removed his hand from her eyes.

Sarah took a deep breath and looked around the floor, careful not to turn her head too far, and keenly aware of the man behind her. It didn’t take her long to find it - the unmarked Beskar was sitting just to her right, beside a pile of the rest of Din Djarin’s effects. Armor, belt, boots, everything except his main blaster which she noted was sitting right next to his knee. She winced as she leaned over, muscles protesting the twisting stretch as she picked up the helmet. It had a solid weight to it that went beyond the physical.

It was distinctly strange to handle it, like she was holding his head. She supposed in a way, she was. Sarah lifted it up over herself, and felt his body move behind and under her as he took it from her hands. She heard the soft slide of it over hair and skin as he put it on.

“All good?” she questioned.

“Off,” he ordered brusquely, and Sarah scrambled out of his lap. This time, she couldn’t resist a peek as she glanced sideways at him while she collected her crumpled shirts.

He looked a little absurd wearing only his pants and headcover, but that didn’t mean she didn’t like what she saw anyways. The real thing wasn’t so different from the glimpse of his body she’d seen during her Trial - though there was an obvious enough change that she recognized what she’d witnessed had been only a figment of her imagination.

It made her wonder what she might have seen if she’d tried to look. It probably wouldn’t have been his real face.

But  _ this _ was real. She wasn’t surprised to note that the broad shoulders and rippled muscles were marred by old scars, and she contemplated what might have made them and how he may have gotten them, as she took note of each. The most interesting one was a set of three long claw marks, drawn from his left shoulder and across the pectoral, before it abruptly ended as if stopped mid-strike.

He was on his knees now as he reached across the small room to collect his clothes, and she saw a glimpse of a tattoo on his other arm, a small splash of deep green ink that peeped up over his shoulder.

His visor turned her way, and Sarah abruptly realized that at some point her side-ways glance had turned into a full-on stare. She quickly dropped her gaze as heat flooded her cheeks.

“Sorry,” she mumbled.

“Ask.”

“What?”

“Ask,” he repeated. She couldn’t tell what his mood was - it was too complicated, but it settled around her like a warm blanket. Unwilling to waste the opportunity he presented her, she let her gaze flick back up to him. He was sitting again, sorting out the pieces of his uniform.

“What’s the tattoo?” she questioned as she pulled her shirts on, then started combing fingers through her hair.

“My warrior’s mark. I earned it when I completed my orientation in the fighting core.”

“Is that kind of like a rank?” she asked.

“No. It just says what profession I specialized in. All Mandalorians learn to fight, but not all make a career out of it.”

He fell silent after that, and Sarah was ready to leave the room to give him privacy to dress. As she went to open the door, she felt his spike of curiosity on the edges of her awareness, clearly distinguishable from the complicated tumble of emotions she felt from him. In that moment, she thought she knew why he’d offered her the chance to indulge her own curiosity. He had something to ask, too. A fair exchange, and she felt the unpleasant and unexpected weight of obligation even as he voiced his query.

“How did you get the scars on your back?”

Sarah stopped, expression blank as her hand hovered over the control board. Hurt welled up, hot and sharp and laced with anger both at how she felt about the way he had asked her, and at the memories it stirred. Some small part of her recognized the unfairness of her reaction - she knew if he’d asked her literally  _ anything _ else, it probably wouldn’t have upset her.

But he had, and it did.

“You don’t have to answer,” he added, sleep-rough voice gentled.

Sarah closed her eyes, and shook her head as if action alone could dispel the emotions his question brought to the surface. The offer of an out eased some of the immediate sense of betrayal she felt, but only just. She opened her mouth to answer him, and found she couldn’t quite bring herself to give him the full story, not yet. There was too much to tell. So instead, she answered the most relevant part of it.

“A whip.”

Memories surfaced, and she could practically  _ feel _ the ghost sensation of a heavy, wet cord of leather wholloping her back as she struggled against rope bindings. It had been a long time ago, and though thoughts of it rarely bothered her now, it was still not something she liked being reminded of. She had felt so helpless, restrained and beaten by a vendor who had been angry at her for lying to him. That, and more.

His anger had been justified.

It was also the first time someone had noticed her abilities, even if they had not understood what it was they’d found.

Sarah shook off the memory and pressed her palm hard against the cool metal panel. As the door hissed open she stepped out of the room, and shut it behind her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nice to finally have a little peek into some of Sarah's history, no? ;)  
> Din no longer has to wonder why Sarah came with a conveniently high pain tolerance for getting the shit kicked out of her.
> 
> Or does he?
> 
> \---
> 
> Mando'a translations:
> 
> Tihaar - A *very* potent, clear Mandalorian spirit made from fruit, hence its sweetness. Alcoholic, naturally.
> 
> Vheh'yaim - "Earth House" traditional Mandalorian nomadic home, see chapter 9's bottom notes for more info.
> 
> Woor Bes'Bev - "Wind Flute," and this particular gem bears some explanation. See, a traditional Mandalorian instrument is a large, weaponized flute called a Bes'bev. Straight off the Wookiepedia lore records. It has a sharpened, wickedly pointed end used for stabby-stabby. When I first read the lore on it, I got super excited, and that's the moment Marrek's character idea came into being.
> 
> Aaaaand... I also totally misread "flute" as "lute" and imagined many great ideas for how a string instrument could be weaponized as a deadly tool -and- still be a gloriously musical delight. It wasn't until I was many chapters in that I revisited the wookiepedia lore page and realized my mistake, and I decided to tweak it a bit. I couldn't find a word in Mando'a for "string," so I mashed "Woor" in front of it, and the Woor Bes'bev was born. Why did I choose Woor aka 'wind' to put with Bes'bev?
> 
> Because it was like three AM in the morning or something and I liked the way it sounded, and the damn thing has grown on me. I really thought about changing it, then decided I like it as a little easter egg to remember my pretty big writing mishap by. Fight me, it stays.
> 
> \---
> 
> Fun trivia: The hypothermia scene was inspired by two good friends of mine. See, I knew when I started this chapter that I wanted there to be FEELS because dammit we're 160 pages into this story and the most that's happened is a hug and some awkward moments, and I really wanted to write something cute and extra fluffy... But I didn't yet know how to make it happen.
> 
> At first I thought about ways Din and Sarah could be forced to cuddle up in his cozy little sleeping chamber, but I quickly realized that if they actively planned for it 1) Din would work out a solution to avoid that and 2) they really wouldn't fit well, because that thing is SMALL, and it'd have probably just been super uncomfortable for both of them. It just all around didn't feel like the right direction to take the story, even though I rather liked the concept.
> 
> Cue my tech-savvy friend Numi giving me the idea of the generator room as likely to be a very warm place on the ship, due to the crazy machinery it houses. He then promptly screeched in horror as I ran away to go pollute the knight in shiny armor with cute feels by turning it into an excuse for cuddles >:)
> 
> Secondly, the hypothermia scene itself was inspired by a story shared with me by none other than my nerdy Star Wars mom. She had her own close brush with death during a camping-trip-turned-unexpectedly-freezing-at-night, and a friend saved her life by bundling her away into his bed. She had no idea what happened or the danger she'd been in until the morning came and she woke up next to him in her birthday suit. Totally innocent, totally necessary, and he literally saved her life. Big thanks to that guy. Both she -and- I are here today because of his timely intervention.
> 
> So if you're skeptical, know that Din did *exactly* what he needed to do here - emergency Skin-to-skin contact to get Sarah's body temperature up.
> 
> And c'mon. Cute cuddles afterwards. Totally worth it.
> 
> As an additional blabber about what's one of my favorite chapters of this story to-date, I had far too much fun making sure this scene was kept... Realistic? Yet still exploring the feelings it could stir in Din, who has never held someone so closely before. Too many fanfics drown life-or-death scenarios with weirdly sexual overtones. Trust me, if you've never been in a situation where you are literally trying to save someone's life, that kind of stuff is usually the LAST thing on your mind. Been there, done that, I know it first hand.
> 
> Once the danger's over though... Your thoughts kinda get free to wander ;D
> 
> So... hope you enjoyed!


	13. The Fight Pit

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OOF this is a long one.
> 
> Let's just say... a *LOT* happens in this chapter. Enjoy, lovelies!
> 
> ;)

By the time they exited the ship, ready for the day, the sun had breached the horizon. The ground glittered with frost that quickly turned to wet dew as the light touched it, and the temperature began to rise.

Sarah found herself whisked away by Mars to be put to work, and she gathered that Din had something going on with the other warriors he was needed for. They didn’t have time to talk about her recent visions and what she’d learned, or for her to ask what it was he’d gotten involved in. Grogu was where she could keep an eye on him, playing with a group of younger children outside.

She had been worried when Mars brought her to the kitchens, afraid Marrek or Sabine had spread word about her abilities. She didn’t think they had, or maybe they had only told select people, because no one treated her any differently than they had when she’d arrived.

Except maybe Mars.

Mars couldn’t stop teasing her about last night, and had somehow managed to get the story out of her about her close brush with death.

“We’ll figure something out for better clothes. Fortunately, you have time - it gets warm here in the day,” the purple-armored woman informed her.

“Thank you - I can pay or trade for it,” Sarah offered, and was pleased at Mars' easy agreement. 

“Mmhm, hurry up with the dishes - I want you out for training in half an hour.”

“Yes ma’am,” Sarah grinned.

“Don’t ma’am me young lady. I am  _ Ba’buir _ to you.”

_ “Ba’buir?” _ Sarah repeated, well aware she was mostly young to Mars only by comparison, if the woman’s cheery crow’s feet and subtle smile lines were anything to go by.

“Enunciate the end more - There you go. I’m in charge of most matters concerning the  _ adiik, _ the children, and those who are too old to be called that yet are new to the covert. It means grandmother,” she explained with a smile.

“Yes,  _ Ba’buir,” _ Sarah corrected her earlier address, and hid her flustered expression by keeping her gaze on the dishes she was scrubbing. Her hair had been drawn back into a tight pony-tail, so she couldn’t hide behind it. The layers the Tuskens had put into it meant many of the shorter strands fell into her eyes as they drifted free, and she’d been thinking of cutting it.

Thin metal plates and clay bowls were piled in the triple-chambered sink. There were only a few other people in the building with them, all busy as they took care of cleaning the workstations and packed away the leftovers from this morning’s busy breakfast shift.

It was still a little strange to be doing something so domestic with a woman who looked more ready for a fight, armed and armored as she was. Mars carried a small blaster pistol in her boot, but her main weapons of choice were a slim rod of black metal wrapped on one end in a leather grip, and a wicked looking Beskar knife off her left hip. Really, it was more of a small sword. The metal rod was worn across her back.

“Goooood morning,” a familiar voice greeted. Sarah’s head snapped up to find Marrek looking at her from one of the kitchen’s four archways, helmet on and his  _ Woor Bes’bev _ over a shoulder.

“Good morning, Marrek,” she said, uneasy. “Sleep well?”

“Very! So. We got off to a rough start. Truce?”

“Oh?” Mars asked as she picked up the dishes Sarah had finished scrubbing and dunked them in the rinse water.

“Happily,” Sarah said with relief. She wiped a hand off on her shirt then stuck it out over the sink. Marrek stepped up into the room to accept, except instead of taking her hand he clasped her wrist in a strong grip and shook it once while she belatedly did the same. His skin was cool against hers where they weren’t covered in his fingerless gloves.

With Din’s question from the morning still lingering on the fringe of her thoughts, she had been doubly dreading crossing paths with the bard. If it weren’t for the events of last night and the fact he didn’t seem to have blabbed, she would have thought this easy acceptance too good to be true.

“Going to entertain us while we work, or don’t you have something better to do?” Mars asked while Sarah got right back to scrubbing. Her fingers had become wrinkly in the hot water, and she couldn’t wait to be done with this.

“Actually, I’m here for Sarah when you’re done with her.”

“Oh! Are you going to put her through the paces, then? I’d thought Dorian was going to.”

“Nope, he got called off by his wife. She’s delivering today,” he revealed.

“Well! Good news,” Mars gushed. “We’re almost done here, you’re early.”

“I’ll have you know I always come  _ exactly _ on time.” The suggestive tone would have been paired perfectly with waggled eyebrows.

“Except when you show up late to the fight,” Sarah teased with a grin, reminded of when she’d first met him and he’d complained of missing out. Mars looked between them curiously, amused, and Marrek took his helmet off so they could see his feigned hurt.

“Sarah! It’s not my fault you’re a fast worker. I claimed four kills on landing - that’s more than anyone else got.”

“Except for me,” she pointed out, vaguely uneasy yet enjoying the banter. It was strange to joke about something so… Not funny. Yet, it also made her feel better about it. “Twelve to your four?”

“Just wait until you’re in the fighting pit. Then we’ll see who’s got bragging rights,” Marrek said with a roguish grin.

“My credits are on Marrek. Sorry, Sarah. I’ve heard you’re a good shot, but you’re not a sound bet outside of that.”

Sarah groaned as if in protest, but she was smiling. She was eager to try.

“Trust me, I know. Din’s already shown me all the different ways to eat dirt. I’m starting to think it's standard Mandalorian cuisine.”

“Hah! You’re not wrong. Good for the gut. Builds character,” Marrek said as he stole a barrel of water to sit on. While they did the dishes he tuned his instrument, and Sarah got a better look at it.

She was fairly certain that parts of it were made of Beskar, and it looked old, or at least well traveled. A long, circular shaft looked like a modified flute with a wickedly sharp end where it protruded from the bottom. It ran straight through the large, flat, vaguely egg-shaped belly of the instrument. Four metal strings were strung from the top to the bottom where a large boxy clip held their ends, and she wondered why it looked to have a hand-grip. The body of the _Woor Bes’bev_ had a short, fat spike on one side, probably for clubbing someone with.

He plucked the strings, and it produced the strangest of metallic ringing sounds as it resonated with the unusual instrument. It wasn’t unpleasant.

Others in the kitchen put in song requests, and Sarah spent the rest of her morning chore humming along to music she didn’t yet understand, for Marrek sang exclusively in  _ Mando’a. _

_ ‘A passionate language indeed,’  _ she thought wistfully. It was beautiful.

~*~

“The transport won’t be coming in until the end of the season at the earliest, which is at least six weeks away. Before that, we need to scout out the drop-off, and find out what kind of firepower we’re going to be up against. Our contact has gotten us the encryption key for accessing their base’s terminal to download the logs and install a bug in the system. Once we do that, our contact will be able to access it remotely, and we’ll have a line on all their future shipments and communications.”

Din Djarin stood in the back of the tavern, where he listened to Sabine go over their roughly finalized plan from start to finish with five other Mandalorians, all casually arranged before a large hologram screen that flickered frequently. On it were displayed several relevant images and bullet-list details regarding the current mission Sabine had outlined.

The rest of the tavern had been cleared of staff and clientele, except for the lead bartender who remained to make sure no one else intruded on their meeting. The quiet sounds of cups being washed and taps being flushed was a comfortable backdrop.

“Afera will take point on the way through the pass. Luek, you’ve got eyes on the skies, and I’ll be keeping watch over our newbie. Kicker and Soren, take the rear. Dakara, you’re in charge of call-times. We’ll be depending on you to tell us when shift changes happen and the path is clear to proceed. Din, you’ll be guarding Dakara and keep the ship ready to bail us out if this goes poorly. Any questions so far?”

Luek shifted half a step forward to speak, black armor and clothes rustling as he crossed his arms.

“Yeah. Has the newbie actually  _ agreed _ to come? You’re hinging a lot of this on her.”

“She’ll come,” Sabine said simply, a hard shine to her eyes. “I’ll talk to her today, once we’ve settled our plan of action.”

The man stepped back with a short nod, and Sabine continued.

“Now, once we come through the pass…”

As she went on to lay out the rest of the details they’d gone over and refined, Din Djarin decided that they might actually have a shot at this.

The others might be skeptical, but he knew what Sarah was capable of.

~*~

Marrek really wasn’t sure what to think of Sarah. She wasn’t exactly what he would call beautiful, though she was pretty in a plain sort of way - it was something in the way she moved and held herself that was attractive. He towered over her by at least a head and a half, and her slight frame was deceptively delicate looking. There had been some quiet snippets of rude gossip about her when she’d first shown up - Mandalorian ladies cared less about physical aspects of beauty and more about their innate strength.

It also made her something of an intriguing mystery. How had she managed to impress a Mandalorian that came from one of the most brutally strict sects?

Marrek intended to find out, largely because he still wasn’t convinced Sarah hadn’t tricked her way into Din Djarin’s good graces. They may have a truce, but he still didn’t trust her.

He kept half an eye on her as he led the way through the covert. Mars had tagged along, as well as at least two other women who had finished their work in the kitchens and were more than ready to see a newbie get their ass handed to them. They chattered behind them in  _ Mando’a _ , effectively cutting the newcomer out of the conversation.

It had been difficult to convince Sarah that her child was safe to leave at play with the other children. She’d taken him aside to explain in hushed tones about why, and only once he pointed out that the region they inhabited wouldn’t allow the kind of tracing she was worried about to work anyways, had she accepted.

When they finally reached the Easternmost side of the nomadic village, he saw Sarah’s eyes widen as she caught her first sight of their destination.

The training grounds were a series of several stations. There were great logs raised several feet off the ground in varying heights, a large, flat ring of sand and straw, a shooting range facing the foothills for target practice, and its most eye-catching feature - a large pit dug right into the ground. It was roughly twenty feet across, and set four feet deep.

He looked at Sarah to gauge her reaction as they stopped at its edge.

She wasn’t paying attention to him. He watched as her eyes darted over the muddy, churned ground, taking in the terrain. The earth here was largely clay based, which made for sloppy, wet footing, riddled with clods of harder chunks. Dried grass had been added to help with footing, but it wasn’t much of an advantage.

“Ready to get dirty?” he asked, and smiled as she met his gaze. “Mars, be my armor guard.” He removed his helmet and passed it to the woman, who accepted it with a cheery smile. 

“Now this is going to be good. Hey! Shar, twenty credits on Marrek,” Mars called.

“Now that’s a bad bet and you know it. No way,” the woman answered. Marrek spared her a glance - Shar had been an old flame of his, once upon a time, and he’d never quite gotten over her.

She still looked just as lovely in her rich, emerald and white armor as she had the day he’d met her.

“Bah,” Mars said, and huffed.

“I’m ready to eat dirt,” Sarah declared, but there was a brightness to her eyes, a touch of mischief, that he didn’t trust.

“No tricks,” he warned, eyes narrowed at her as he stripped himself of armor. He wasn’t going to let her turn this lesson - and competition - into one of her clever Jedi deceptions. “You know what I mean.”

“I won’t. So, how’s this work?”

“We fight. The only rules are no weapons, don’t kill each other, and no impaling eyeballs. That happened once, a couple cycles back, so now I tell everyone about it because I  _ really _ like being able to see. It was a bloody mess,” Marrek mused as he recalled the vivid scene. He’d been a spectator, and the idiot who’d put their opponent’s eye out had lost a hand for their efforts. Sarah stared at him wide-eyed, and he grinned. “Don’t worry. I won’t break you in half, probably. But if you don’t yield - I  _ will _ break bones.”

“Anything goes?”

“Anything goes,” he confirmed, then leaned forward to whisper, “Except what you’ve already agreed to forgo.”

He turned to find Mars had carefully arranged his gear in a neat stack on the ground, over his back plate. His jetpack leaned up against it all, and he rolled his shoulders. With the substantial weight removed, he felt ready to float off the ground and kick some butt.

“Loser of this match has to wear their mud ‘til nightfall!” he declared, and jumped down into the pit. The wet ground squelched under his boots, and he carefully walked across the ring. The sounds of friendly jibes and cheers being called out surrounded him, and he looked up to find that several others had come up to the edges of the ring to spectate. Adrenaline rushed through his veins as he stretched his arms and legs. Pit fighting never got old.

Pleased he’d drawn a crowd, Marrek paced around the center with his arms in the air and a grin on his face. He’d have something good to sing about at the tavern this afternoon - he already had some ideas for a few comedic verses.

He turned to find Sarah watching him from the edge of the ring.

“What marks the start and end of the match?” she questioned. He wasn’t sure if she was being overly cautious, or if she was stalling. His money was on the latter.

“Shar! Call the starts. Match stops when one of us taps out or says they yield,” he decided. “Double-pat.” His ex gave a short nod to accept, arms crossed.

“Alright,” Sarah said, and hopped into the ring. He noticed she’d discarded her gun harness and belt, but he knew she still had a knife in her boot. He’d caught the glint of its hilt during her visit the other night, and flexed his fingers.

She wasn’t the only one still armed.

She slipped and stumbled over the mud, badly fumbling her balance on the uneven, slippery ground, and Marrek rethought his impression of her. If she could barely stand now, there wasn’t going to be much of a chance of her keeping her footing during the fight. He’d have to teach her how to shift her center of balance and dig her feet in.

But first, he was going to show her exactly who she was dealing with. Lessons could come  _ after _ he introduced her to this particular flavor of Mandalorian cuisine.

They faced off, some ten feet apart, and he squared his stance. The ground might be slippery, but it was still hard packed below the first inch or two from last night’s freeze.

“Fight!” Shar barked.

Marrek rushed forward without hesitation. Sarah whirled aside, and ducked under his arm. He planted a foot and pivoted to chase her movement, and then they were grappling each other. She was like trying to hold onto a live snake, wriggling and shifting her weight and never keeping in one spot. He had enough of a hold to keep her from breaking free of him, but his footing wasn’t secure enough to press his height advantage and bring her down. He needed a better hold.

_ ‘At least she knows to keep moving,’ _ he thought, then adjusted his grip and tried to haul her off balance.

It would have worked if he hadn’t had the bad luck of his heel slipping out from under him, but instead of pressing her brief advantage, Sarah broke free and scrambled back several steps. She kept the sun at her back, but it was just high enough it wasn’t a distraction to his eyes.

“Chickening out on me already, love?” he taunted, and slowly paced towards her. Her eyes followed his every movement, and he made a new observation; her balance on the uneven terrain was just fine. She kept her knees bent and a lightness in her step as she never put all her weight on one foot for long as they semi-circled around each other. She continually edged back from him with an alert, wary expression.

Had she been acting at the start?

Another few steps and she’d have nowhere else to go except towards him, and Marrek charged her for a take-down.

He was surprised when she suddenly hopped up in the air, and belatedly realized what her angle in ducking out from him had been - she’d been leading the fight to better footing, and now she had the advantage of a section of solid earth the sun hadn’t melted as it had the rest of the pit’s choppy floor.

All this he realized in the split second it took for her to launch herself at him, and then he had an armful of woman as her weight slammed into him, arms locked around his neck as she struggled for a secure choke-hold. He moved with the momentum even as she jerked her weight to unbalance him, and they whipped around until his boots lost traction and he staggered back, yet he still had the advantage. He slammed her into the wall of earth and let his weight do the rest. He had her pinned.

He was pleased to find she wasn’t completely inexperienced. Her ballsy stunt would have worked on the average street rat or the unprepared, but not with a fully trained warrior.

“Well, that was unexpected,” he said conversationally, not even winded. His opponent was breathing heavy. “Give up?”

“No,” she said, eyes flashing. She threw her weight to the side and nearly broke his hold on her, and as Marrek opened his mouth to taunt her he caught motion in the corner of his eye. She had fisted her only free hand in the wall, and ripped a clod of silty dirt free. He ducked just in time to avoid it crashing into his face and it hit the side of his head instead, and heard the shouts and jeering from the Mandalorians around them.

She brought a knee up between his legs that made him grunt, and even as he grappled her arms into a tight-fisted hold, she used her hips and feet to lever them away from the wall.

He let himself fall backwards and flipped her, then felt a surge of triumph as she gasped. They hit the ground hard and rolled, and he let her go only so he could snatch her by the shirt and haul her back down into a better position. As he straddled her legs and locked her arms behind her back, face-down in the mud, he felt the fierce flash of victory and the excitement that came with it.

He was enjoying this.

“You’re a real wildcat,” he complimented her as he leaned down, and jerked his head back just enough to avoid her sharp headbutt. “Would you be this feisty in bed?” He wanted to see if goading her would cause her to lose her temper, which meant she’d lose her focus. He’d effectively won the match, but he wasn’t ready to let it end just yet.

He heard her suck in a sharp breath, but that was all the reaction he got before the fire returned to her fierce gaze as she turned her face to look at him sideways.

And then she was thrashing, throwing her hips to the side to try and unbalance him. She levered herself up and nearly threw him off, and he let go of one of her arms to grasp her other and bent it up at a painful angle. Play time was over.

“Do you yield?” he asked over the sound of her pained hiss. She struggled, and he lifted her arm another fraction of an inch. Any more, and he’d risk severely injuring her. He hoped she didn’t think he’d been bluffing when he warned her he was willing to break bones.

“Yield,” Sarah choked out. Marrek released her immediately and got off, then offered a hand up.

She rolled onto her back and looked up at him, panting, then sat up and accepted the hand. He hauled her to her feet with a grin, half an ear tuned into the side conversations around them.

As the word  _ laandur _ \- a rather insulting way of saying Sarah was weak and delicate - was traded out in conversation for the informal use of  _ ramikadyc _ to describe her _ , _ he felt a strange sense of satisfaction. She was inexperienced, it was true, but her ferocity in this brief spar had done much to earn a measure of regard from those who watched and judged her.

Including himself.

It was a good start, and she hadn’t pulled any mind tricks, so it was well earned.

“I’ll admit, that was far more fun than I thought it was going to be. You’re not  _ completely _ defenseless without a blaster,” he praised, and wiped mud off of his face. Sarah was brown from head to foot, only patches of her hair and neck free from the slick coating.

“Again,” Sarah said simply as she tromped back to the start position, and he liked the fire in her eyes.

“I love a lady who gives orders.”

~*~

Sarah was really starting to question if the Mandalorians were a bad influence on her. She shouldn’t be  _ enjoying _ getting her ass handed to her repeatedly, and she wasn’t, not exactly - yet something about the experience made her want to keep going. Maybe it was the rush of adrenaline or the excitement of being posed with a difficult challenge, or that Marrek’s flirty taunts and goading riled her and made her  _ want _ to hit him just to wipe that cheeky smirk off his face. Or maybe it was simply that she liked the idea of if she failed enough, eventually, she’d get better.

It definitely had something to do with the rush of victory she felt the first time she managed to actually catch Marrek off guard, and flipped the man on his back with a move Din Djarin had taught her. Her triumph hadn’t lasted long, as he’d immediately nailed her with a brutal kick to the stomach in retaliation, but the moment had been sweet.

She wanted to get better.

So she ate dirt. Repeatedly, unavoidably, and she didn’t complain, even though she wasn’t looking forward to spending the rest of the day caked in mud and sweat. She was positive she’d be washing gritty clay and silt out of her hair for months to come.

For the first few rounds Marrek simply let things be an open fight. Mud got in eyes and ears and mouths, elbows were jammed into stomachs, knees bruised tender spots, and her ears were ringing from the number of times she’d been bodily slammed down on the ground, into the pit’s wall, or wholloped with Marrek’s fist or a heavy-booted kick.

After that, he started giving her pointers, and told her how to keep her balance and the best ways to grapple her opponent or break free of a hold. They’d drawn a crowd, and Sarah felt the pressure of their watchful gazes. Some simply stood by, silent and observant, no doubt sizing her up, while others jeered and cheered and generally made good sport out of the whole thing. At least, she thought they did. Marrek seemed to enjoy the attention, but he offered no translation for what was being said.

Marrek got a lot of support from their spectators, and Sarah was proud of the few whoops of praise she’d earned when she’d managed to get in a good strike or break free of a difficult hold.

“You have a mean left hook,” Marrek said, as he rubbed his jaw with a brightness to his eyes that was hard to look away from. She’d gotten over her hesitance to pull out her more aggressive attacks fast. He could handle it, and he  _ definitely _ wasn’t pulling his own punches.

At least, she thought he wasn’t.

If he was, she did not want to know what it felt like when he didn’t.

“I think we’ll call it done for the day. Ready for a nice, hot shower?” he teased, standing over her. She was laying on her back in the mud, every inch of her simultaneously numb and alive with pain at the same time.

Sarah ineffectively wiped at the mud on her face, then answered him.

“You have no idea how excited I am for the sun to go down. I would kill for a hot shower,” she enthused with a gusty sigh. Marrek laughed at her and offered a hand up. After she was back on her feet, he clapped her between the shoulders and she managed not to stagger.

“Good girl. You know, I was where you are now, once upon a distant time. Much younger than you, of course. How old are you, anyways?”

“Forty three,” she wheezed.

“Really? You look younger than that. Glad to know you’ve got at least another hundred years to go.”

“Thanks?” She dug mud out of her ear and grimaced, then looked for a likely spot to wipe her hands off so she could clean the grit off her tongue.

There wasn’t any, so she spit instead.

“Well, that was entertaining. Ready for more tomorrow?” Mars called as they neared the side. Marrek grabbed fistfulls of grass on the edge, then jumped and hauled himself over. Sarah’s boots slipped on the slick wall of the pit as she struggled after with far less grace.

“Yes,” she wheezed as she staggered to her feet.

“Hah! We’ll make a Mandalorian of you yet, Sarah. The first step is being part masochist,” Marrek teased.

She was glad the mud on her face hid her blush.

“I gues--” Sarah whipped her head around at the sound of a familiar, squealing burble. Din Djarin and Sabine were walking towards them, her child in the former’s arms and reaching for her with tiny hands. Din’s welcome presence was calm and steady.

“Grogu!” she exclaimed, brightening. “Hey, sweetie. Hi,” she added belatedly as she glanced up to the silent man who held him and then to the grinning woman who accompanied them both, helm tucked under her arm.

_ “Su cuy'gar, _ Sabine. You missed all the excitement,” Marrek greeted. He had collected his equipment from Mars, save for the jetpack which she carried for him. He held the pile carefully by the edges of his plating, though there was no helping the helmet that shifted back and rested against his muddy chest.

“So I see. Sarah, I need to speak with you after you go clean up.”

“Nope, we can talk now.”

“Loser wears the mud,” Marrek explained with a grin. Sabine rolled her eyes.

“Alright, now, then.”

“I’ll catch up with you later, Sarah,” Mars announced. “I’ll scrounge up some gear before dinner - you’ll have something warm and dry to change into for tonight. Let’s go, Marrek. This thing is heavy!”

“Ack, you’re so bossy.”

“See you. And thank you,  _ Ba’buir,” _ Sarah added.

If it weren’t for the fact she could feel the sudden spike of intensity about Din Djarin as the helmet moved to look at her, Sarah wouldn’t have thought anything of it. His calm mood was touched by something else that rose to the surface that she couldn’t quite place, and decided she liked. It was warm and bright.

She wondered what it meant.

“Here - Water,” Sabine offered, and removed a small canteen from her hip. Sarah accepted it carefully, but there was no way to avoid getting mud prints all over the prettily painted metal. She gratefully poured some into her mouth without touching her lips to the neck, then passed it back. She hadn’t even noticed just how parched she was.

“Thank you. So, what’s up?”

Sabine looked her up and down with a critical gaze, and Sarah felt goosebumps rise.

Grogu grumbled at her as he realized she wasn’t going to pick him up, and she spared him an apologetic glance before returning her gaze to the female Mandalorian.

“I want your help. We’re running a mission of a… Delicate nature, and your unique talents are perfectly suited for it.”

“Wait. What?”

Sabine looked mildly amused by her shock.

“You want my trust? This is how you earn it. And it won’t be just me making judgements. Are you in or not?”

Sarah glanced at Din, but his helmeted face offered no hint at his thoughts, and the mood around him was back to his calm, steady aura. Since there wasn’t any trace of anger or alarm, she figured that meant he was alright with whatever it was Sabine had planned.

“I’m in,” she answered, and ignored the unpleasant tightening in her chest as she agreed to something she wasn’t exactly sure on, yet knew she needed to do.

Sabine’s smile was practically predatory, and there was a bright flash of excitement in her eyes that made Sarah squirm on the inside.

“Great. I’ll fill you in on details tonight, and you’ll join us tomorrow for a moot before your morning shift and training. There are five others involved; they are aware of your abilities, but you’ll need to demonstrate.” 

Sarah swallowed thickly. Talking was suddenly very difficult.

“Alright.”

“So… How’d it go with Marrek? Glad to see you’re still in one piece,” Sabine said with a smirk.

“About as well as it did with Din Djarin, except instead of sand, this time it’s mud.” She looked at him and grinned.

“Don’t track it on the ship. Stop squirming, kid. She’s not going to hold you - you’ll get muddy.”

“I don’t think he really cares,” Sabine laughed. “Anyone laid claim to your time yet this afternoon, Sarah?”

“I need to spend some time with my family, but otherwise, no.”

“Great. I want to join you three for part of that; I want to discuss the Sith,” she explained at a much lower volume.

Sarah’s blood ran cold even under the warm heat of the bright sun. The mud was already starting to dry and crack.

“...Sith?” Din Djarin questioned.

Sarah looked away.

“Think Jedi, but… Bad. Real bad.  _ Evil,” _ Sabine explained, a distinct edge of loathing in her words that was hard to miss.

Din’s gaze returned to her, and Sarah could feel the undercurrent of concern it held. He was a smart cookie - she figured he was already drawing lines and making the connection between the dreams he’d woken her from and what was being said now. In hindsight, she should have made it herself right from the start. It left her feeling strangely hollow to know she had overlooked something so glaringly obvious.

The tension was broken by Grogu as he extended his arms, and suddenly, Sarah found herself hauled forward as if invisible fists had grabbed her by the shirt and yanked. She stumbled forward a step and a half, and barely caught her balance before she would have crashed right into a startled Din. The child burbled at her hopefully, tiny breaths heavy and labored as if exhausted. He reached for her again, this time without the Force gathered in his tiny fingers. Even so, Din Djarin quickly caught them both up in one large palm and pressed them down.

“Grogu! That is  _ not _ ok,” Sarah reprimanded, though part of her felt all warm and fuzzy inside. His message was clear. “I know what you want, but just because you want it now doesn’t mean you’ll get it. I’ll cuddle you later, buddy.” If she’d had any thoughts of caving before, they were banished now.

“Don’t do that again,” Din quietly ordered.

Very much put-out, Grogu dropped his ears, sunk back into his surrogate father’s chest, and gave a tiny growl.

“Hey.” Din jostled him gently.

“Did… He just Force-drag you because he wants a  _ hug?” _ Sabine asked, looking torn between great amusement and shock.

“Yes.”

“Wow. I am  _ so _ glad I’m not his parent. I’ll leave you two to it,” Sabine said, then struck off with a lazy wave.

~*~

Din Djarin had meant it when he said he didn’t want her tracking mud on the ship, so even though Sarah had dried off by the time they’d walked back, he made her sit outside while he went and fetched them lunch. He took Grogu with him, still mildly alarmed at the kid using his abilities on Sarah. He might have had good intentions, but that didn’t make his behavior appropriate.

As he set the child down on a ledge while he set about preparing two trays of food, Grogu stuck out a hand and turned his palm over, and watched him expectantly.

Din looked at him, finished what he was doing, then looked back.

“What is it?”

He got a short, chirped bark he wasn’t sure was speech or more of Grogu’s expressive noises.

Grogu flexed his fingers, and Din reached over and put one of his into the tiny hand. The little claws closed around the orange-gloved digit, and he felt a vaguely familiar pressure push at his mind.

At first he was startled, but shock quickly gave way to curiosity. He was familiar with Sarah’s presence, warm and enveloping and distinctively  _ her, _ and it was useful to recognize that there was a distinct difference between them. Grogu simply felt… Alien.

It was like he was the color blue instead of Sarah’s warm reds, and though the thought didn’t really make sense, it somehow seemed to fit.

Somewhat hesitant, he let the kid enter his mind. He had a strong feeling that if he had refused, the child wouldn’t have been able to press the matter.

He recalled that Sarah thought Grogu was better at this than her, and now that he was experiencing it for himself, he didn’t think that was the case. The child’s thoughts tumbled around like a distorted, badly sifted mixture. Many he couldn’t make sense of, but he picked out hunger, affection, loneliness, and a sharp tang of regret he was pretty sure was meant to be an apology.

As soon as the thought occurred, Grogu burbled at him and let go, and the connection ended.

“You should tell her that. I’m not going to hold a grudge about it so long as it doesn’t happen again. You’ll learn,” he assured. Green ears lifted, and he felt the twitch of a smile on his face.

When they left the ship, he found Sarah sprawled on the ground, staring up at the sky. She’d tried to comb some of the mud out of her hair, but he could see exactly where the woman had given up, wild locks snarled and shoved back from her face.

“You seem happy,” she observed as he stopped to look down at her.

“You’re still able to sense… Things?” he questioned, then sat down on the grass as she pushed herself up to accept the plate of food. Grogu waddled up from behind and plopped in front of her, and Din watched as Sarah smiled and lightly touched his head with just the tips of her fingers.

“Yeah. It’s not as strong as it was right after the meditation, but it’s still more than normal. I’ve been trying not to pry,” she admitted.

“Thank you.” He set the other plate down then watched as Grogu dug in, shoving small cubes into his mouth as fast as he could. “Chew your food; don’t just gulp it down.”

Large, round eyes lifted up to him as the child stilled, then resumed eating… at a slightly slower pace.

Sarah looked around them, then set her food away half-finished. Her shoulders were tensed, and her hands settled in her lap as she fiddled with her thumbs.

“Sabine took me to a place that… Tested me,” she began carefully. He remained silent, curious and willing to hold his questions until she’d finished. “I saw things. I met Yoda again. I saw you, and Grogu. My mom.”

She started to trail off, listing off other details he had no context for, and he recognized she wasn’t telling him things in order, either.

“Start with the beginning,” he interrupted, grabbing her attention. He didn’t like the far-away look in her eyes when she fell into her thoughts like this, and he was pleased to see her focus resurface. “You’re not making sense.”

Her jaw clenched and she took a deep breath, then let it out in a rush.

“Right. Sorry. It’s a lot to take in. I saw… Things I was afraid of, things that made me angry. Memories, and illusions. It started - Actually, that’s not important. In one of them, I saw who’s been invading my dreams. The… The Sith. I was in a marketplace with my mother. And then he showed up. I didn’t realize it at first - I don’t think it was really him. Not until it suddenly  _ was _ him, but... different.”

“Who showed up?” He had a guess.

“Rhett Vass,” she murmured. “We grew up together, and we dated for a few years before I left home. I… I had no idea he was sensitive to the Force.”

Wait. What?

There was a kind of haunted anguish in her eyes as she began to describe being confronted first by her mom, and then by their revealed enemy, and about how the illusions had been mingled with aspects of reality. Her confusion, her fear - the guilt over being so easily drawn into the constructed environment, to the point she’d been unable to distinguish between what was real and what was not.

He listened in growing consternation as she went on to explain her reactions and how she’d felt through it all, as her hands gestured in the air in sharp, jerky movements. His clanmate’s gaze was distant and unfocused again, only this time with a disturbed, glossy brightness to her eyes he found he didn’t like. It made him feel like she was far away from him, even as she shared a very personal experience.

It was a struggle to swallow down the multitudes of questions this information provoked, in order to let her talk through it. At times, he found he didn’t have to - and he was both unnerved and touched in equal measures that she was willing to share her story with him so thoroughly. It granted him a measure of insight into a facet of her he hadn’t been familiar with, had only seen glimpses of.

The gesture wasn’t lost on him, even though he suspected it wasn’t an intentional machination on her part. This wasn’t just her way of keeping him informed; this was a gesture of great trust, as she placed her hidden vulnerabilities so thoroughly into his keeping.

She didn’t have to tell him about the other aspects of her visionary experience, about how she’d ran to him from the cave and finally felt safe, or about the judgemental eyes that had haunted her in the dark. She didn’t have to tell him that she’d struggled against the temptation to peek at his face in the shadows.

He couldn’t help but think this part of her story had been something of a premonition - there was an uncanny similarity he found he couldn’t ignore, as he remembered holding her in his arms the night she’d nearly died of hypothermia. A chill ran down his spine.

It made him wonder if she’d have been able to resist the temptation to look at him, if she hadn’t already been tested. He decided she would have; she’d proven herself worthy not once, but twice. That the former wasn’t a real situation didn’t discredit it - it had been real enough to her at the time, and it was what one did when no one was looking that spoke of a person’s true nature.

It made him wonder what she’d think if she did see him. He had laid bare eyes upon her face, had seen her without a barrier between them. It left him feeling a strange sense of disbalance, as though he had taken something from her without return.

It was more difficult than it should have been to put those thoughts aside and focus on what she had to say.

By the end of it, after she re-circled around in her story to describe how she’d fled from Rhett and the market scene and encountered Master Yoda, her hands were shaking as she stuffed them under her arms.

Out of everything she had told him, Din had singled out what he felt was the most crucial detail, and that needed to be addressed before anything else.

“You’re nothing like him,” he asserted plainly. That much was obvious.

“You don’t know me that well,” Sarah answered quietly, unable to meet his gaze. Her spiraling mood had started to affect Grogu, who finally abandoned his food and shuffled over to crawl into Din’s lap. He put a hand on the kid’s head to offer comfort.

“Sarah.” Blue eyes lifted, yet she still didn’t meet his gaze. “You are nothing like him. If you were, you’d be dead. I’d have shot you myself.”

Her mouth dropped open, and nothing came out. He shared a look with Grogu, then picked the kid up and thrust him at her. She accepted, startled, and then she was hugging the child to her chest, head bowed, shoulders shaking.

He had no idea what to do with her tears, and gave her an awkward pat on the back, then left his hand there as she leaned towards him. Grogu cooed softly at her, tiny hands fisted in the fabric of her tunic as he returned her embrace. Din felt his chest tighten at the scene, hot and sharp, and it left him feeling inadequate and out of his element. Before he could think of anything to say to try and comfort her, she spoke.

“I’ve done - I’ve done  _ awful _ things,” Sarah confessed, voice hiccuping. “I’ve lied, I’ve cheated, I’ve stolen - I was a terrible person.”

That was hard to believe, but now wasn’t the time to indulge his curiosity.

“You’re talking to the wrong guy about a colorful past. I’m not some saint, and I don’t care what you  _ used _ to be. Who you are now and who you choose to be from here out is what counts. Look at the kid. You think Grogu thinks you’re a monster?”

The child in question perked his ears at the sound of his name and looked back at him, and Din realized how little he actually used it. He’d have to get better about that.

“No,” Sarah murmured after a moment. Dust flaked off her clothes as she reached a hand up to gently pet the child’s forehead, and left behind brown streaks. Grogu made a soft cooing warble, and she sniffled. “Why?” she asked without looking at him, a tremor in her voice.

He was confused.

“Why what?”

“Why don’t you think I’m… I’m a freak? How could you just accept it so easily? Accept either of us?”

“I’m a Mandalorian. Half the galaxy thinks we’re heartless monsters.”

Finally, something shifted in her demeanor, and she met his eyes. Ugly tear tracks had drawn bright, clean lines down her muddy cheeks as the clay had been wetted, and generally did her appearance no favors.

But her brilliant, icy eyes were striking. Something about the way she picked herself up from within brought a light to them, and finally, he had her back.

“So, you’re saying I fit right in?” she joked quietly.

“Something like that,” he answered. Silence fell between them, before he voiced a concern that had been turning over in his mind ever since she revealed the supposed identity of the Sith. “This guy you knew,” and dated, apparently, “He probably knows you recognized him. Might go after people you care about to draw you out; things could get complicated.”

He had not forgotten her suggestion of visiting the scholar she’d mentioned knowing on Ad’ier, in the hopes of finding out more about Grogu’s species. He wasn’t so sure it was a good idea anymore; they could find someone else.

“There’s little I can do about that except kill him when I get the chance to. I don’t think he’ll be able to find my mom easily - she’s settled on a pretty obscure planet, primitive, and she doesn’t have a chain code on record. Neither do I.”

That was useful. He could still see the worry in her eyes, but she didn’t look frightened.

He turned sharply at the sound of someone’s approach, and Sarah looked behind her to follow his gaze. Mars strode towards them with a loop of string in one fist and a datapad in the other, helmet on, her purple armor bright and glaring in the sunshine. It was impossible not to see her coming.

“Hey, mudfrog. Stand up so I can get your measurements and-- Are you alright?” she asked, as she took in Sarah’s tear-streaked face. Her helmet dipped down then up, looking the woman over. Then it abruptly swung to him, and Din wondered if she suspected he was the cause of Sarah’s recent distress.

“I’m fine,” Sarah answered, and set Grogu down. Din picked the kid up as he waddled over to him and watched her stand.

Mars still stared at him with an expectant stillness about her, but if the woman was hoping he would elaborate in the face of Sarah’s silence, she was going to be disappointed.

It wasn’t his story to share.

“Well, I’ll be out of your hair soon enough,” she said finally, then turned to Sarah. “Arms out. There we go. I won’t promise an exact fit, but I’ve got something worked out for you. Pick a color - Lime, gray, or yellow.”

“Uh… Grey? Nothing bright, if possible.”

“Mmhm. Green or blue?”

“Green.”

“Right, all good. Say, any idea how long you two will be staying here? We should sort out lessons for the Foundling if it’s going to be a while.”

“End of the season at the earliest,” Din supplied. They had time.

“Oh! So several weeks at least. Well, then, what do you say?”

Grogu beeped at them as he looked around between the three adults, and Din gently brushed one floppy ear with a finger.

“It’s a good idea.” He was entirely positive that Grogu wasn’t going to get a better chance to get a step up on his education, and the kid could only benefit from it. With an entire camp of Mandalorians surrounding them, he wasn’t worried.

Even if he was still reeling at the discovery not all of them had been raised under quite the same restrictions as those he’d been taught.

“I… Don’t think it is,” Sarah countered, sounding wary and on-edge.

Mars took one look between them, then held her hands up.

“Right. You two sort that out, and come see me when you’ve made up your minds. You should consider it, Sarah - You’re going to be busy with your own lessons, and the child needs to learn how to be independent. Smothering is not a good trait in a mother,” she admonished, and Din wholeheartedly agreed.

As the woman walked away, he turned to find Sarah with a clenched jaw and taut muscles, and inwardly sighed.

“Sarah--”

“It’s not safe,” she interrupted, borderline desperate, and he was swiftly reminded of her recently explained experiences from her trial. “What if they find out?”

“It’s not a secret. The kid is who he is; if Grogu causes trouble, with the Force or otherwise, they’ll handle it. He couldn’t be safer here.” She opened her mouth to protest, and he leaned forward. “You, too. He’s a Foundling, and you’re an Initiate.”

The words were out of his mouth before he’d properly considered them, and he half expected her to protest. That he didn’t  _ want _ her to was a realization he shoved aside. The implicit offer had been made, and he held his breath to see how she’d react.

She shut her mouth, but the anxiety didn’t leave her eyes as her fingers slowly flexed into fists on her lap. Seeing that she still needed to be convinced, Din gathered his thoughts carefully before he launched into an explanation.

“Do you realize how beneficial it is for us to have you both?” he began, and ignored the warm rush that flooded his chest. “Your strength is added to ours. The kid’s too young to choose if he wants to pursue folding into the family permanently, but you’ve already taken the first steps; you are safe with us. And you aren’t the first Force user to be so.” That it was both news to him and a rarity was largely irrelevant. There was precedent, and it mattered.

“People are cruel to what they don’t understand,” she answered, her expression beginning to close off.

“No. Cruel people are cruel because they choose to be that way. Have I been cruel to you? I certainly don’t understand you all the time.” He didn’t need to understand her abilities to accept the fact she had them, and he wondered why that was so difficult for her to realize.

She closed her eyes and was silent for several moments, then the tension finally began to ease out of her. It was slight, but it was a start.

“No, you haven’t been,” she admitted softly.

“So. Lessons?” He turned it into a question that addressed Sarah and Grogu both - ever since Sarah had pointed out how the child paid attention to his surroundings, Din Djarin had been coming to realize the child understood a lot more than he liked to let on. He wasn’t a babe, and Din thought the kid equated roughly to what a human toddler might be. It was hard to say.

Grogu beeped enthusiastically, and Din bounced him on a knee. That drove the child into delighted squeals, so he kept doing it, and felt a warm rush flood over his chest which knotted into a tight, fuzzy ball. He caught Sarah’s double-take, and the softening of her expression as she regarded him. Something shifted in her eyes, and like a switch flipped, she relaxed entirely.

As the remaining tension left her, Din suspected his own mood, and probably Grogu’s, seemed to benefit her state of mind as much if not more than appealing to her sense of reason had, though it had certainly been necessary. It wasn’t the first time she’d changed as if in direct response to him, and he wasn’t entirely sure what to think about that.

It felt intimate.

“...Alright,” Sarah accepted quietly. She brightened, then, and reached out to put a finger in Grogu’s hand. Din stopped bouncing his knee. “Be good. I’ll go talk to Mars, unless you want to come with?” she questioned as she peeked up at him.

“I’ll come.” He wasn’t going to let her set this up on her own, and noted that she looked relieved. That was a good sign. He shifted grogu off his lap and onto the ground so the kid could walk on his own two feet, then stood.

He was at peace.

There was no better way he could think of to describe what he felt, as he walked through the covert surrounded by things he had never expected to see again in such abundance. His tiny clan kept pace with each long, measured stride. He did not rush, for there was no need, and it let Grogu keep up without tripping.

Though it was jarring to see Mandalorians with bared faces, usually those engaged in active conversation, most wore their helmets as they went about their day-to-day, as it should be.

Din Djarin had been raised in a sect that relied on secrecy for their survival. After concentrated efforts were begun by the Empire to eradicate Mandalorian societies, they had abandoned the traditional  _ vheh’yaim _ he’d grown up in, in favor of underground bunkers. Though there had been much preserved of their way of life in the Navarro covert, they had been confined by the strain of isolation and the need to conceal themselves.

He still wasn’t sure what he thought about learning that his was a slightly unique way of life among their culture, and it frequently brought to mind Tarre Viszla’s words;  _ “We have splintered only in the constructs of our own narratives; we are all as one.” _

Sarah kept glancing sideways at him, trying to be discreet about it. It might have worked if he didn’t actively have half his attention on her, simply because he enjoyed seeing her take in the surroundings.

It pleased him to share this with her, and to know she had become an initiate; first by accepting the bond of clanship, and then by beginning to engage in the tenants of the  _ Resol'nare. _

_ Mando’a _ sounded so natural on her lips.

When they were in an open space devoid of immediate company, he waited until he caught her looking his way again to address her.

“Need something?” he asked. She startled, and shoved her mud-caked hair back from her face.

“No.” She quickly faced forward, and his brow raised.

“You’ve been staring.”

“...Sorry.”

“Sarah.” He stopped walking, and she belatedly followed suit. The kitchens weren’t far from them now. She needed no further prompting to recognize his implicit request.

“It’s just… You seem - Different. It feels nice.”

Did she mean his mood? When he asked as much, she nodded. He wasn’t sure what to do with the information, then decided that nothing was needed. As he picked up the pace again, they swiftly caught up with Grogu who had run out ahead of them.

_ “Olarom!” _ Mars welcomed them, her purple helmet easily spotted against the dark greens and browns of the cooking station. She set aside a tray of crockery and came around the counter to step outside and meet them. “So! Lessons?”

Sarah gave an amused huff, probably at the similarity in phrase. She answered just as he opened his mouth.

“Yes. Those responsible for watching him will need to be aware of a few things.”

As Mars squared off and shifted her weight, Din Djarin suspected the woman was preparing herself for disapproval of a hen-pecking mother.

He rather hoped that wouldn’t be the case, and glanced at Sarah.

She did not disappoint him, and launched right into explaining Grogu’s unique talents. Din offered some additional observations of what he’d witnessed the child do, and how it tended to leave him in the aftermath. Halfway through, Mars removed her helmet so she could display her open shock and curiosity, and eventually, her amusement.

“Well, he won’t be allowed to get away with any of that, that’s for certain. You hear that,  _ adiik? _ We’ll be ready for you, so don’t get any ideas.”

Grogu looked up from where he sat playing with the grass, and  _ raspberried _ at her.

The kid definitely understood more of what was said than he let on.

“Hey. That’s not a respectful way to address your elder,” Din admonished. “Don’t do it again.” Grogu turned to look at him and lifted his ears, then drooped them. He grumbled, but it was faint enough Din was willing to let it pass.

This time.

“He seems to understand talking just fine. Does he speak himself?” Mars questioned.

“Not… Normally,” Sarah said, shifting her weight. “He’s communicated through - thoughts. Sensations, mostly. Sometimes a shared memory.”

“Wait. So he can do the magic hand things  _ and  _ speak telepathically?” Mars asked, eyebrows climbing. Sarah’s nerve looked ready to fracture, and Din took a step forward to intervene. She’d done well, especially when he knew how hard this was for her, even if he didn’t quite grasp why.

“Yes. He’s occasionally made use of it to get a message across; things he can’t easily express through body language alone,” he supplied.

“Interesting. What’s it like?” Mars wondered.

“It’s like a gentle pressure on your head,” Sarah murmured. “You can rebuff it, and I wouldn’t depend on it exclusively - It can be very… Intimate. Your thoughts may be exposed to him during the exchange, so if you’re not keeping focused, it could make the experience uncomfortable or confusing.”

“Well, we’re going to see about teaching him to use his words.” Mars turned to address Grogu in  _ Mando’a, _ smiling, and Din quietly translated for a curious Sarah.

“You will be taught.” He turned to Mars, and simply said, “Thank you.”

“Of course. Well, then, ready little one?”

Grogu looked up at her and froze, and Din kneeled down to pick him up.

“Trust her. You’ll see us later; enjoy this while it lasts,” he instructed him, then passed the kid to Mars. If Grogu had any further misgivings he didn’t show it, and settled down comfortably enough in the woman’s arms.

With Sarah he watched her walk off with a cheery farewell, and then it was just the two of them again.

“What now?” Sarah wondered.

Din looked her up and down. She was a mess.

She was going to be even more of one soon enough.

“My turn,” he declared, then struck off to the East.

“Wait. Your turn for  _ what?” _ she asked as she jogged to catch up to him. With Grogu away he no longer had to check his stride, and he was eager to reach the training grounds.

“Instruction.” Marrek may have worked with her in the morning, but he didn’t intend to let her combat education go entirely out of his own hand.

~*~

Marrek had told her the first step to becoming a Mandalorian was to be part masochist, but Sarah was really beginning to think it was the opposite - because Din Djarin  _ definitely _ had a sadistic streak.

She could tell.

She  _ felt _ his content mood and the frequent spark of amusement as he barked short, curt orders at her.

She was given a pair of leg weights he had found in a box of communal training equipment, then sent running across the balance beams. At first it had been easy, as they were only a few pounds each, but she quickly learned just how much even a slight difference in weight changed how she moved and the strain it put on her body. She slipped and fell frequently, sometimes catching herself and other times epically wiping out on the hard packed ground.

And each time, he simply told her; “Again.”

When he was satisfied with her footing on the logs, he gave her what Sarah was beginning to think of as a Mandalorian’s version of a break - a change of pace. Instead of running, he had her do push-ups until her arms shook and her muscles burned. When she physically  _ could not _ force herself completely up off the ground, he had her roll onto her back, put a boot on her toes to steady her, and counted her curl-ups in  _ Mando’a. _

That had probably been the hardest exercise for her, if only because it was  _ incredibly _ awkward to view him from that angle. And his air of satisfaction at watching her huff and puff and sweat to death as she suffered didn’t help.

She also hated Marrek tenfold. The clay she’d been caked in broke free and got in her eyes, her mouth, and itched over every inch of her skin. She was fortunate that little had gotten inside her boots, or she would probably have ditched them to go barefoot, which really might not have been much better.

Din walked her through stretches, then put rocks in her hands to carry around or throw, and taught her how best to utilize the swing of her arm and shoulders to cast them far away. Though he didn’t specify, she assumed this was a prelude to what would eventually become detonation charge training.

And when  _ that _ was done, he gave her a cool-down break walking circles around the surface-level fighting ring, before he then worked with her on wrestling holds and take-downs. It helped that she had a little experience in this area, but her advantage was so negligible it may as well haven’t existed. She did enjoy this more than the other aspects of his training, because he allowed her to throw him around so she could learn how to do it.

There was something distinctly satisfying about pitching a fully armored man off her back or over a well planted leg and into the dirt, though it was tempered when he frequently followed it by an attempt to take her down with him. He never did the same thing twice, and it kept her constantly guessing what might come next. The worst was when he didn’t do anything at all, and she was kept on edge, keyed up and waiting for a counter that never came.

Sometimes she failed entirely, and ended up pinned flat on the ground beneath his heavy bulk, questioning whether she could really consider herself sane anymore as he calmly explained what she’d done wrong.

She liked to think she was getting better, but it was probably just wistful thinking at this point.

She knew her lessons for the day were over when the next time she was laid out on the ground, Din Djarin offered her a hand to stand. She grunted as she was hauled to her feet. He held on until she caught her balance, then let go and clapped her lightly on the shoulder.

“You’ll do this each afternoon we’re able,” he announced, and winded, she could only nod.

Sarah looked up at the sky to find the sun was well past its zenith, and the temperature was just beginning to drop. There were maybe a few hours left of daylight, and she could not wait for a hot shower and clean clothes. On the bright side, her workout had made her sweat some of the clay off, so her face felt  _ slightly _ less like it’d been baked into a mud pie’s crust.

He didn’t seem surprised when someone slow-clapped, and Sarah turned to find Sabine sitting several yards away on the box her leg weights had come out of. As she bent to remove them, the Mandalorian spoke.

“Never gets old watching a rookie get schooled. Glad to find you’re not the sort to break in the first few days of training. You might actually make it through alive,” she joked, then unhitched the canteen from her hip and tossed it at her. Sarah had to step forward and extend her arms to catch it, and almost dropped the thing.

“Thank you,” she wheezed, not even caring about the handprints she left on the metal as she unscrewed the top, then poured delicious life into her mouth.

_ “Ba'gedet'ye _ \- You’re welcome.”

“How do I say thank you in  _ Mando’a?” _

“There’s a few ways to express it, depending on how you want it to be understood.  _ Vor entye _ means you’re not only expressing gratitude, but accepting you owe something in return. A debt to be repaid.  _ Vor'e _ would be appropriate here, as it is simple thanks.  _ Ori'vor'e _ is that, but more emphatic.”

_ “Ori’vor’e, _ Sabine,” Sarah said with a smile, and tossed the canteen back to her. “I have never been so excited to have fresh water.”

“Ha! Well, while you catch your breath, you’re my captive audience.”

Sarah nodded and plopped down right on the ground, and took another swig before handing the vessel back to its owner.

“The facility we’re scoping out is an Imperial-occupied warehouse on the southernmost end of the region of Nerrai; that’s about an hour’s flight away from where we picked your ass up, as a point of reference. It’s manned with a mix of locally hired hands and Imps, and they deal with weapons, raw goods for making them, and apparently slaves, though we’re not clear on where they end up. Seems like this is just a checkpoint for them.

“We need to access one of their main terminals and plug a data stick in; it’ll take five minutes, tops, to do its thing. The problem is getting there; we need to sneak in, and sneak back out without being revealed. Your friend there says you can do that.”

Sarah cast a sideways glance at Din Djarin, and the helmet turned to look at her. She felt the strangest mixture of pride at his confidence in her, and the pressure of expectation.

“I’m going to need a uniform of their staff, or it won’t work reliably,” she said, turning back to Sabine. “And I want more details on what, exactly, I’ll be walking into. Am I going alone?” She hoped not.

“No, I’m going in with you. We’ll have a four person escort there and back from the drop point, and two covering from afar. If we get busted, we’ll be shooting our way out and the mission is toast, and we fall back to plan B. This is prep work for another objective, but you won’t be briefed on that until this is over and you’ve proved we can trust you.”

“I take it you’re on the mission?” Sarah asked, and looked at her companion.

“Yes.”

“His ship’s a ghost - which means we can get in under their radar. We need him as a pilot. We’ll go over the exact floor plans and protocols each morning so you have a good grasp of what you’ll be expected to do. We’ll be running this in about two week’s time, when the weather’s ideal and you’ve got some further training experience under your belt.” 

“Alright.”

“Now - The Sith. What do you know of him?”

Sarah had been expecting this, though she wasn’t sure when the topic would come back up. Fighting back bile, she quietly explained her few dream experiences with confronting him, and shared only the most necessary information.

“Rhett Vass,” Sabine repeated with contempt. “Never heard of him, but that’s not really a surprise. I’ll put out some ping requests for intel and see what, if anything, anyone knows about him. I don’t like this - First Moff Gideon, now a Sith? The Empire doesn’t seem as dead as people like to say it is. Something’s going on.”

“I’ve been meaning to ask - isn’t that a rebel insignia on your armor?” Sarah questioned, and pointed to the mark. It was easy to miss if you weren’t paying attention, a light orange that matched well with the maroon of her over-decorated breastplate’s base color.

“It is. I served with the rebellion once upon a time, before it bloated into the bureaucratic joke the New Republic is now. That’s where I learned about the Jedi, as it happens.” She gestured back at the sprawling covert grounds behind them. “Now I’ve been working on improving connections with the Mandalorian coverts and taking care of home. Remnants of the Empire and the trash they flooded it with still squat on Mandalore, and I intend to see it taken back.”

A chill ran down Sarah’s spine. With the spike of intensity in Din’s aura, she was certain she wasn’t the only one, and shared a look with him. Sabine caught their exchange, and raised an eyebrow in challenge.

“What? Going to tell me the planet’s cursed and I should give it up?” she asked with heat, a hard light in her eyes.

“...No,” Din said carefully. “It’s a good thing.”

Sabine’s harsh expression melted into a smile touched by a yearning wistfulness that was so powerful, Sarah could feel it radiating from her without trying.

“Perhaps you’ll be willing to join us.”

“I’ll keep it in mind. We have other priorities at the moment,” Din answered.

“I understand - though, I don’t think they’re so unrelated. I’ll keep you informed if I find out anything on Rhett. Be careful, both of you.”

“We will,” Sarah promised.

Sabine stood then dusted off her canteen, and hooked it back onto her belt. Sarah picked herself up off the ground with a muffled groan.

“Are you two going to hole back up in your ship tonight, or will you join us for tonight’s dance?”

“Dancing?” Sarah asked, surprised. Sabine laughed at her.

“What, did you think we spent all our time in all work, no play? Join us. I bet your friend there could teach you the steps, unless the Children of the Watch don’t engage in the traditional dances?” she asked, turning to him.

Sarah caught the tension around him even as he gave a short shake of his head.

“I learned the steps,” he admitted begrudgingly, then continued, “I don’t dance.”

~*~

Din Djarin was used to being stared at, usually by outsiders sizing him up. He was distinctly  _ not _ used to being pinned down by the gazes of two women very clearly plotting how to coax him into the festivities.

It wasn’t going to happen.

They made their way to the Western side of camp where a bonfire was being built. He came to a full stop as he spotted Mars, Marrek, and an unfamiliar, female Mandalorian in cyan armor walking their way. In the stranger’s arms was a pile of folded clothes. Sarah hadn’t noticed them, caught up in conversation as Sabine led her into the group of Mandalorians that had gathered for the night’s revelry. He heard the teasing she got for her muddy appearance, and a few compliments on her morning spar.

“Hey, lightweight!” Marrek greeted, and stopped beside him. The two women he was with strode past and made directly for Sarah, and Din had half an eye on her as she was whisked away. “I heard you don’t dance.”

He eyed the man’s helmet and suspected Sabine had comm’d him at some point on their way back. Unexpectedly irked by the meddling, he shifted his weight.

“No.”

“Someone’s going to have to teach Sarah,” Marrek enthused, then pulled off his helmet. It revealed a lopsided smirk as brown eyes tracked the woman in question through the crowd until she finally vanished from their line of sight. Din felt an unaccustomed tightness in his chest as he saw the covetous look in the Bard’s lingering gaze. “Since she’s an official initiate now, she’s fair game. I plan on asking her to a  _ Mesh’la Redular,” _ he revealed. “That going to be a problem?”

Yes, it was.

“No.”

“Great!” Marrek clapped him on the shoulder, and Din felt his jaw clench. “So, I take it you’re not going to touch the  _ tihaar _ again? Shame, you’re a funny drunk.”

He did not want to be reminded.

“No.”

“Man, we’re back to one-word conversation again? I thought we’d moved past that.”

Din turned to look at him full in the face.

“Yes.” Then he walked off, darkly amused, and left the bard to wonder which question he’d answered.

The music started not long later. They began with the usual opening group dance as Din watched from the sidelines, arms folded over his chest. Mandalorians in full kit circled around the bonfire, chanting along to an old song with a hand on eachothers’ shoulders, while their boots stomped the ground in time to the music. It was a noisy, colorful affair, riddled with the rustling sounds of armor and clinking weaponry.

Marrek had taken up a place with four other Mandalorians, playing the flute portion of his  _ Woor Bes’bev _ as a haunting counterpoint to the beat of hide-covered drums and a ringing tambourine that flashed with sharp blades.

The sun had dipped below the horizon, and the fire glowed warm and bright as stars began to dot the sky above. The evening air smelled of smoke and earth and metal, the familiar scents of home.

It made him feel at once in a place where he belonged, and wretchedly homesick. There were just enough Mandalorians without helmets on that he was unable to ignore the nagging difference between this community, and the one he had grown up in.

It felt all wrong, even as it felt entirely right.

He was drawn from his ruminations as a cheer went up, and he looked over to see what had caused it.

Sarah was led out into the ring of warriors, a few of whom briefly broke apart to let her and two other women in. Sabine held his clanmate’s arm up in one wrist, and the stranger from before held the other.

Mars shouted something in  _ Mando’a, _ but he couldn’t hear exactly what was said over the boisterous noise surrounding him. He drifted closer for a better look, and swore his heart stopped.

Marrek boasting of Sarah’s officialized status should have tipped him off, and yet, Din Djarin found himself unprepared for what he saw.

The mud was gone, and Sarah’s cheeks were bright and flushed, easy to view with her hair having been cut pragmatically short, almost buzzed. A large bruise spread across her left cheek where she’d probably been punched in a spar, yet it didn’t detract from the brilliant ice blue of her eyes. She wore the layered, form-fitting suit of Mandalorian style, of which armor would eventually be fitted to. Mars had done more than cobble Sarah together some dry clothes - the group of women had presented her with her first official uniform.

Which meant the cyan-garbed stranger was likely an armorer.

He took in Sarah’s appearance, examining the new outfit. The main, long-sleeved gambeson was dark grey, tucked into her pants. Her neck was covered by a black-ribbed throat and shoulder cover that was buckled on by straps which ran underneath the armpits. It was well fitted over a tight, padded vest in a lighter gray that would go beneath a breastplate to support it. Her belt padding was in the same color, and covered the change between her torso coverings and the insulated black trousers, which were stuffed into her familiar brown boots. She wore her own belt and the gun harness he’d given her, as well as a new cross-strap across her torso. It held no adornment save a single pouch and several loops for future munitions, and would otherwise have to be modified to suit her needs by her own hand.

Stitched onto the sleeve of her right shoulder was a plain line outline of the Mudhorn clan signet in bright green thread, and he abruptly realized he hadn’t taken a breath since she stepped into view.

He was walking forward before he even knew what he was doing, and came to an abrupt, jarring halt as Marrek left the band to approach her.

Din Djarin felt his throat constrict and fists clench at his side, and then suddenly, Sarah was looking right at him. 

~*~

When Sarah had been herded off by the three armored women, she hadn’t expected more than to be shown where the covert showers were and to be tossed some clothes. She had been more than a little shell-shocked when she stepped out of the washroom in a towel and found herself ringed by the three of them, each with a squared stance and their helmets on.

At first, she’d thought they were going to fight.

When Mars had stepped forward and began reciting a short, brief speech in  _ Mando’a, _ which Sabine translated for her, and Sarah had felt like she might drift away from a complicated mix of emotions.

‘Proud’ wasn’t something Sarah was used to feeling so strongly, and it robbed her of speech.

_ `Cin vhetin,`  _ as Sabine told her, was the short phrase which summed up the brief ceremony. Translated literally, it meant “clean slate.” It was the official recognition of her initiation into the Mandalorian society, and the erasing of her past life as it had been before. She would be judged only by her actions from here on out, Sabine explained, with a hard, bright look in her eyes that spoke volumes and reminded Sarah of the upcoming mission.

She would be going on it not as an outsider begged a favor of, but as a true member of the group. Trust for trust.

She would do everything in her power to live up to it.

They walked her through each piece of the suit, known in its entirety as a  _ Kute, _ as she was shown how to put it on and what function each part served. Sabine explained their names in both Basic and in  _ Mando’a _ and swiftly grilled her to repeat each, while Mars calmly helped her with the side laces and buckles. The crotch strap that held the insulated, long-sleeved shirt in place was awkward at first, but she liked the way it prevented the thing from riding up as her clothes before had often done.

The stranger that had joined them was introduced to her as Krae Viar, wife to Afera and a well respected armorer. She did not speak except to instruct her on how to maintain her gear, and gave advice on how best to modify it on her own, should she find something needing adjustment.

When Sarah was in full kit, sans armor, Sabine had her kneel on the floor and cut her hair. She was granted the choice of a longer, neck-length style or something needing less maintenance, and Sarah requested only something that would not be easily pulled on. Marrek had grabbed her by the hair once in their sparring, and her scalp still stung from it.

When they were done, Sarah pulled on the fingerless gloves the armorer handed her and flexed her hands, then stared down at herself.

This felt right in a way she had never known she could feel.

“I don’t know what to say,” she managed finally, struggling to speak.

Mars clapped her on the back.

“Your face speaks volumes; you need not say a thing. Come! Join your tribe. Tonight, we celebrate!” 

As they led her through the crowd to the dancing ring of Mandalorian warriors, she felt taller even though the armored people around her more often than not dwarfed her.

_ “Slaat’ulik verd to aliit! Aliit ori’shya tal’din!” _ Mars shouted over the rising cheers. Sarah had been told what it would mean on the walk here - ‘A Mudhorn warrior joins the family. Family is more than blood!’

Her arms were still being held up as she was walked around the bonfire in a counter-clockwise circle, and Sarah fruitlessly scanned the area with her eyes. She couldn’t pick out the one person she wanted to see in the colorful, shadow-smothered crowd, but she did recognize Marrek as the orange warrior abandoned his instrument and walked straight towards her. He had his helmet on, yet even so she could feel his bright, sharp mood.

She barely had time to realize the unusual nature of sensing him so clearly and unintentionally before Krae clapped her once on the shoulder, then left without another word between them. Mars turned away to shout for a change of music, and Sabine jogged off to join the line of circling dancers with an excited whoop.

“Sarah! My, my, you clean up well. Dance with me - Or are you too winded yet from our spar?” he challenged boldly. She opened her mouth to answer when a raging wash of hot, boiling emotion rolled over her, and she whipped her head around to find Din Djarin standing at the very edge of the crowd, just past the circling warriors.

Was he  _ angry _ at her? Had she overstepped?

Her heart sank, words lodged in her throat, and Marrek followed her gaze.

“Don’t worry about that big lunk. He won’t interfere,” he promised.

“Wait - interfere with what?” she asked, startled, and still not sure if she should be feeling hurt or concerned or  _ what. _

“With our dance!” And he struck at her - except it wasn’t a proper strike. She quickly side-stepped his sharp movement, and then he grabbed her by the wrist and hauled her forward into a high-stepping spin Sarah belatedly picked up the tempo of. He crossed his wrist with hers, hand folded into a fist, and held her gaze through his inscrutable visor.

It was hard to be captivated by his breathtaking regard when she could still feel the powerful wash of Din Djarin’s riled emotions, but there was no easy way to break away.

Not when he had put her on the spot in the middle of a crowd of onlookers who cheered. She saw other’s join inside the circle, and soon there were at least six other pairs of Mandalorians dancing in a similar fashion.

“Duck,” Marrek ordered, and Sarah barely had time to follow his command before he spun away and swept a leg through the air over her head. She popped up on his other side and he put his back to her, then forced her to keep up his quick, measured steps, each in time to the beat of the lively drums and deep-throated chanting. He swung away then advanced, and drove her through a series of circling, zig-zagging steps.

As she fell into the rhythm of fast footwork and sharp, combat-esque motions that began to feel more like a game than a dance, Sarah couldn’t help but laugh in delight.

If Din wanted to be a sour sport during such a happy moment, she wasn’t inclined to let him spoil her mood. If it was important, she knew he’d have interrupted, so it couldn’t be anything dire.

And that was about when Sarah realized another possible explanation for why her usually level-headed Mandalorian friend might be radiating an aura more inclined towards murder than celebration.

Was Din Djarin  _ jealous? _

~*~

He was not jealous.

Not in the slightest. It didn’t bother him that Sarah was smiling, laughing even, as Marrek guided her through the steps of the  _ Mesh’la Redular. _ It didn’t take her long to pick up the pace, as the pair high-stepped in a tight circle with their wrists crossed.

Someone tapped him on the shoulder, and Din Djarin jerked his head to look. He should not have allowed someone to sneak up on him like that.

“Care to dance?” a woman asked, a few inches taller than him and boasting strong, broad shoulders, narrow hips made wider by twin holsters. With the flickering firelight and dancing shadows, it was impossible to tell what color her armor was except ‘dark.’

Later, he’d tell himself he said yes because it’d be rude to refuse, even though the only thought on his mind right then was blue eyes, rosey lips, and his mark on Sarah’s shoulder.

Without a word he grabbed the woman’s hand, then held it up as he led her towards the ring of warriors, heart pounding. They parted and he quickly stepped through, then crossed his arm with hers as they swung around.

It had been a  _ long _ time since Din Djarin had danced. Even so, he had not forgotten the steps. It had been one of his favorite activities as a much younger man, before their sect had gone underground and been blocked off from the nighttime sky and the freedom to host such loud, boisterous festivities.

He told himself he was simply doing his heritage and his partner justice as he put his all into the motions, every movement precise and calculated, every step well timed, well placed. It was easy to fall into the rhythm of the music and it’s steady, sure beat.

He grabbed his partner around the waist and swung her up and over his shoulder. She flipped with the motion and landed behind him in a graceful arc, then hooked her arm through his, and spun with him. They jumped back a step and his partner laughed in delight, then circled with him before crossing arms again.

As he stomped the circular path in time with her, his eyes darted to where Sarah danced with Marrek.

He tripped.

His partner either didn’t care or didn’t notice, but he saw Sarah look his way.

She was smiling at him.

Shit.

~*~

When the song ended, Marrek stopped Sarah by picking her up by the waist, then spun around with her as he let out a laugh, her hands braced on his forearms to steady herself.

“You were born for this, Sarah,” he declared as he set her down, and smiled even though she couldn’t see his face behind his dark visor. Her cheeks had a pretty flush to them, though the dark bruise somewhat spoiled the effect.

“I’ve never felt so much at home,” she confessed as she met his gaze with a warm smile. It reached her eyes, and made them glitter.

Marrek was starting to think maybe this woman really had earned her way. Though he still felt a vague sense of unease at knowing what it was she could be capable of, she had yet to do anything to support his initial concerns.

Even when she’d tried to use her abilities on him the other day - he could recognize now, so far after the fact, that it had been a defensive reaction. He knew how protective a mother’s instincts could be concerning their child. His first had died to save him.

Now, as he stood with his hands on her shoulders, the firelight casting a warm glow over her pale features as she looked past him, he wondered if he’d made a miscalculation.

It wouldn’t be the first time.

“If I may be so bold as to say,” he began after he’d followed her gaze. “You seem to be rather distracted, Sarah.”

She started and hastily flicked her eyes up to meet his, and he smiled.

“Sorry, I guess I am. Excuse me,” she said abruptly, and before he had a chance to respond, she had pulled away and stepped out of reach.

He didn’t need to look to see where she was going; he already knew.

He looked anyway.

And she managed to surprise him, because she  _ wasn’t _ walking straight for Din Djarin, but instead cut right past him and through the ring of warriors, who were beginning to break up from the first dancing set. Between one moment and the next, she was gone.

Bemused, he returned to his friends on the other side of the fire and collected his instrument.

He knew  _ exactly _ what song he wanted to play tonight.

~*~

On the outside of the circle of gathered adults and the few teenagers dotting the crowd, Sarah waited. She wanted to test a theory.

She didn’t have to wait long.

Din Djarin broke free of the press and made right for her, and she kept her arms folded across her chest until he stopped within arm’s reach of her. Then, she stepped forward and reached up to knock her knuckles against his breastplate, and he let her.

“I thought you didn’t dance.”

“I was asked. It’d have been rude to refuse.”

His voice was calm and steady, but she could feel the turmoil. Amidst it, a nearly concealed flicker of desire as he looked down at her, hopeful.

She felt butterflies in her stomach, and an involuntary smile stretched her lips.

“So… If I ask you to dance with me, does it put you under the same chivalrous obligation?”

She was close enough to see him swallow before he answered her with only a short, curt nod.

Sarah’s smile tipped into a smirk, then she deliberately stepped back. It was hard to do.

“Then unless you  _ want _ me to - I won’t,” she declared, and watched his reaction closely.

He went rigid and she felt the spike in his emotions, even if this time she didn’t quite understand what they were. Yet even without their strange connection, she was certain that she would have recognized what this was.

Her earlier guess had been  _ right. _ He was jealous. Over her.

Sarah’s heart fluttered.

When he didn’t say anything, just stared at her, the fuzzy feeling started to fade away, and she began to doubt her observations. Maybe she’d been wrong - maybe it was just in her head. He’d made it clear enough times over that he wasn’t interested in her.

Did she even want him to be?

She looked away from him, suddenly wishing she was by herself and somewhere he couldn’t see the disappointment she felt. Just as she turned to walk off, he reached out and grabbed her by the hand, and she stilled.

“Sarah--” he faltered, and she slowly turned to look at him, and dared to hope.

“Yes?” she prompted when he didn’t continue.

He turned his head at the sound of the next set of music starting up, and now there was a new dance forming. Two lines stretched out between the musicians and the bonfire, and she recognized an immediate pattern - one line of women, and one line of men. At the very end stood Mars with a long spear in her hand, flanked on either side by two male Mandalorians.

Din didn’t speak again, so she stepped to the side to see better what was happening. He didn’t let go of her hand as she’d expected him to, and she fought down a blush at the uncertainty his odd behavior stirred in her.

She watched as Mars passed the spear to one of the men, then grabbed the other by the hands and danced their way down the aisle, spinning and stomping to the beat of the music. Two women came out to flank the man left behind, and the pattern continued.

_ “Kad’la’bevik Redalur,” _ he murmured quietly. “A Spear Dance.”

She glanced at him.

“Looks like fun.”

He let go of her hand, head bowed.

“You should join in.” There was a roughness to his voice that hadn’t been there before, but his message was clear enough. He didn’t plan to join her.

Sarah sucked in a breath, then before he could see her unexpected and unwanted hurt, struck off for the ring of light.

It was certainly more fun than sulking in the shadows. The line moved at once very slow and very quick, and she felt only a little out of place as one of the few people not wearing a helmet. She was the only one without armor. Couples danced down the narrow aisle at dangerous speeds, and she was careful not to lean out too far and risk being hit. There was a lot of laughter and cheering when one man threw his chosen partner over his shoulder and jogged away with her, her loud laughter obvious enough to Sarah even if she didn’t understand what was probably a sharp, joking reprimand in  _ Mando’a. _

Her excitement grew as she neared the front of the line, and watched the next pair dance away.

Finally, it was her turn. A man in green and silver armor was left holding the spear, and she and the woman in front of her stepped out to either side of him.

She felt a jolt of surprise and utter delight as he turned away to pass the other woman the spear.

Distracted as she was, she never saw him coming.

One moment she was standing there, reaching for her partner’s gloved hands, and the next she was suddenly grabbed by the forearms and whisked around as Din Djarin cut between her and the stranger. She nearly tripped over her own two feet in the first several seconds before she caught her footing and twirled with him, and laughed.

“Idiot,” she accused him fondly. He adjusted his hold on her to grab her hip in one warm palm and her hand in the other, then led them in a fast, side-stepping, hopping march the rest of the way down the line as people laughed and cheered. “Isn’t this breaking the rules?”

“Might be.”

“I want a proper dance after this. That was so unfair.”

“After the set is done,” he promised, then let go of her as they reached the end of the line. She was surprised and delighted to see him walk to take a place in line, and she couldn’t stop smiling as she did the same.

A woman a few people ahead gave up her space in line to join Sarah at the end, and she recognized with a start that it was Krae.

“So did he actually  _ ask _ you or just sweep you off your feet?” she questioned, strangely assertive, and Sarah blinked at her.

“He’s not much on the whole talking thing.”

“So he didn’t ask?” Krae pressed, and Sarah narrowed her eyes with an inkling suspicion.

“...Noooo, not  _ exactly,” _ she said carefully, and the armorer laughed, delighted.

“Hah! I win the bet, then. Marrek really thought he’d have the balls to ask you proper. You just earned me eighty credits.”

“You guys were betting on if he’d ask me to dance?” Sarah asked, incredulous.

“Of course. You two show up with a Foundling in your arms, his claim on you as a member of his clan before you’re even a proper Initiate, and he says you’re not a thing? Didn’t buy it for a minute.”

Sarah shuffled along with her as they clapped to the music, cheeks red.

“It’s not what you think, we’re… Not exactly--”

“Honey, I’ve been married fifty eight years, and seen twelve children off to adulthood. And some didn’t make it that far after. Believe what you want, but if you’ll pardon my advice - Don’t wait. Life is much too short for that, and you never know when it’s going to end.”

“I’ll.. I’ll keep that in mind,” she answered, badly flustered. “It’s just - I barely know him. It’s too new.”

“All the more reason to  _ get _ to know him. This suits you,” she added, and effectively changed the topic as she stopped clapping long enough to reach over and tug on Sarah’s sleeve. “How’s the fit now that you’ve been moving around in it?”

“Wonderful. I can’t thank you enough,” she said, then realized maybe she _could._ _“Vor entyee?”_ she tried.

“Hah! Close.  _ Entye, _ don’t hold it so long.”

_ “Vor entye,” _ Sarah tried again, as she glanced at the line to see where her friend was. The men’s line moved fast as it was several people shorter, and Din Djarin was well ahead of her in line now.

“Better. I’ll come by some time and we’ll work out payment, but some of that is a gift. You’ll be expected to contribute something back so it may go towards equipping others in need. This is the Way,” she said with an air of finality.

Sarah nodded her acceptance, and spent the rest of the dance with a warm glow in her heart and butterflies in her stomach.

~*~

When the  _ Kad’la’bevik Redalur _ was over, Din Djarin made his way over to find Sarah for their promised dance. He’d thought hard about what set to teach her, and had settled on a short, simple one suitable for friends or for… More than friends, while not being as traditionally flirtatious as what Marrek had invited her to do. He planned on explaining  _ that _ to her as well, because he doubted the bard had bothered.

When he found her, Sarah was busy talking to Mars who held a sleeping Grogu. Disappointment came hot, sharp, and unexpected. The older woman passed the child back into his temporary mother’s keeping, and he wondered if Sarah would change her mind. Then, he decided that he hadn’t made a commitment to  _ when _ after the set ended he’d dance with her. He was patient - he could wait.

And he was determined not to lose his nerve this time.

She turned to look at him with a smile on her lips and a bright, shining warmth in her eyes.

“I think it’s time to head for bed. Did you know you cost Marrek eighty credits?” she asked, and he raised a brow even though she couldn’t see it.

“What’d he bet on?”

“He thought you’d  _ properly _ ask Sarah to dance. I told him it was a bad bet,” Mars cut in, and before he had a chance to retort she was already walking off, humming to herself. Sarah smiled at him, and he met her gaze. His chest tightened, and he knew what it meant.

He’d never been any good at lying for very long, even to himself. He almost wished he was, because he still wasn’t sure what to do about the emotions Sarah’s presence stirred in him. It made things more complicated than he had wanted them to be.

“He deserved that,” he said, and Sarah laughed quietly. Grogu stirred in her arms and she adjusted him, and the kid went right back to sleep after a groggy grumble, his face turned into her shirt.

Din fell into step beside her, and they enjoyed companionable silence the rest of the way back to the ship. It left him the mental space he needed to contemplate the recent turn of events.

As much as he felt he  _ should _ be, he couldn’t quite find it in him to be upset about it.

Especially not with her walking ahead of him in Mandalorian garb, oblivious to his silent admiration of the view.

Repairwork had started on the Razor Crest earlier in the day, but there was still a gaping, tarp-covered hole at the back hatch. The engineers needed the ramp to stay lowered until they were done working on it.

As Sarah settled Grogu into his hammock, Din stepped up beside her.

“Sleep in there with the kid tonight,” he quietly ordered.

“What? No.”

“You’ll be warm.”

“I have an insulated, padded bodysuit now. I’ll sleep up top.”

“Sarah.” He wasn’t willing to budge on this - she’d almost  _ died. _

“I am  _ not _ going to hole myself up in a tiny confined box,” Sarah hissed, voice still lowered with an added spark of heat to it.

“Are you claustrophobic?”

She folded her arms around herself and grimaced.

“...To a degree.”

That made this more difficult.

“I have life support sensors built in,” he pointed out as he tapped his breastplate. “If my body temperature drops below a certain threshold, I get an alert. If  _ you _ get too cold - You don’t wake up.”

“Last I checked, the generator room is plenty warm, unless that was just  _ you _ that made the room so hot,” she said, cheeks flushed.

He swallowed, and abruptly remembered the feel of her skin against his, and the sight of her face without a helmet between them.

He closed his eyes.

When he opened them, she was in the middle of closing the sleeping chamber door on Grogu. She then turned and struck off for her pile of blankets that had been lumped back in her spot. She gathered them and her rocks, and he waited until she was up the ladder before following after.

It didn’t make sense to him.

“How is this any better than the bunk?” he questioned as she dropped her blankets on the ground in the generator room. It was cramped, though it did have enough space she could stand, so maybe that was it.

“It has a good memory associated with it,” Sarah mumbled.

“...Nearly dying is a  _ good _ memory?”

“I don’t remember that part,” she pointed out. “But I remember waking up.”

He had nothing to say to that, but he figured he didn’t need to. She could probably feel his response.

And she was right that she’d be kept warm, sleeping in here; so short of bodily forcing her into the bunk - which was a terrible idea - he didn’t see a way to convince her otherwise. That settled that.

When she straightened and turned towards him, he held out a hand. They had just enough space.

“What?” she asked, exasperated. He flexed his fingers at her once, and she put her slim hand into his as she stepped out into the storage room. He liked her new gloves.

“I owe you a dance.”

“Wait, right now? Here?”

“Would you rather wait?”

“...No,” she admitted. “Though - I have to ask. How old  _ are _ you, exactly? Because I’m gonna be honest, if you’re some wrinkly old dude under that helmet, I can’t do this. I probably should have asked that sooner.”

He huffed.

“Forty seven.”

Sarah brightened.

“You’re four years older than me.”

He pulled her forward, effectively changing the topic, until he held both her hands and they stood in the center of the storage room. If he kept the dance slow, their steps should be quiet enough it wouldn’t disturb Grogu’s rest.

“Did Marrek explain the dance he invited you to do?”

“Nope.”

“Traditionally, it’s a courtship dance. More recently, it’s simply a way to express… Interest.”

“So does that mean you’ve already broken one poor lady’s heart here?” She looked flustered as he’d expected her to be, and chose not to comment.

“No. I did not dance the  _ Mesh’la Redalur _ with her. We did something else.”

“That’s a really pretty name. What’s it mean?” Curiosity was quick to replace most of her embarrassment.

“Beautiful Dance,” he translated, then explained, “It originates as far back as the original settlement of Mandalore. It was often used by courting couples both as a way of showing off their skill of movement, and their ability to flow together as one unit. You danced it well,” he admitted as he remembered.

“I thought at first… Maybe you were mad at what I was wearing, or something I did wrong,” she began, and rubbed a thumb over the side of his glove. “But then I saw you dancing, and that didn’t make sense. Were you really that jealous?” she asked softly, and he saw the hopeful light in her eyes. 

He almost denied it, mildly mortified she’d seen right through him so easily, yet not really surprised.

He wanted to, but he wouldn’t lie to her.

“I was.”

“You know, for a guy who says he doesn’t dance, you sure seem to know a lot about it.”

“...I used to. It was a long time ago.”

“Nice to revisit it?” she asked, and smiled softly at him.

“When the company is good,” he allowed, then turned her palms over and began to instruct her.

~*~

Sarah had butterflies in her everything. She was pretty sure she was lightheaded not just from the emotions Din Djarin evoked in her, but also because between her combat training and the recent partying, she was wrung out.

But she didn’t want to go to bed yet. Not when she was enjoying the rare experience of his calm, rich voice, as he spoke to her for longer than a single sentence.

The man could  _ talk.  _ She added it to her mental list of his hidden talents.

“Each movement is symbolic,” he explained, and left her hands in the air before her as if she were holding an invisible tray, elbows bent. His palms settled lightly over her own.  _ “Toh -  _ Connection,” he said, then gently guided her arms out, palms still touching as he rotated his wrists until their fingers aligned. He took a step forward, and at his light tug, Sarah did the same.

Their chests were nearly touching.

“Closeness of bond. The unquestioned trust forged between partners - platonic or otherwise. 

_ “Kar’ta toh kar’ta, runi laararir narser tome -  _ Heart to heart, our soul sings together in purpose,” he quietly translated, and Sarah’s breath hitched. Not only at his poetic recitation, but at the yearning she could feel emanating from him, unexpectedly touched by something bittersweet.

He side-stepped slowly as he let go of her right hand, dropped his left to the side, then gently hooked her other elbow in it as he turned. Facing opposite directions now, she followed the movement and focused on matching Din’s precise, measured strides as they circled each other.

“Time turns on, and we circle within it. The cycle spins unbroken, for kept within our hearts, memory is stronger than death.” He repeated the verse in  _ Mando’a _ for her, and Sarah decided that Marrek’s apparently very flirty fighting dance had  _ nothing _ on this.

If Din Djarin was trying to make her completely fall for him, it was working. Or maybe he was just reinforcing their familial relationship as clanmates.

She secretly hoped it was both.

He released her arm and reversed direction, and she pivoted to mirror his movements as they hooked their other arms together.

As they completed the circle, he slipped his arm from hers and instructed her to continue turning, and she found herself standing back-to-back with him as he hooked both his elbows with hers.

She remembered this move from the bonfire with Marrek, and she was pretty sure that brief, prior experience was the only thing that kept her from tripping over her feet as she stepped in a slow spin with Din.

“Warrior’s trust. We watch each other’s back,” he said simply, then abruptly stopped and flexed his arms taut to lock her in place. Sarah found herself hauled back tight against his shoulders as he crouched low and bent forward. She sucked in a breath and raised her knees to move with the momentum as he effortlessly flipped her over, and his hands steadied her as they came face-to-helmet.

She was largely surprised she’d actually landed on her feet instead of on her dignity.

“What’s  _ that _ stand for?” she asked as they straightened, and he pressed his palms to hers again.

“Showing off.”

Sarah couldn’t help it. She laughed, and wondered if the bright, cutting feeling she sensed radiating from him could be described as  _ smug. _

This time, the movements were familiar as he brought her through the dancing steps again, and when he flipped her over his back, she realized three very important things as her boots hit the floor and she met his gaze through his visor.

The first was that she wanted to do this again. The second, that she definitely forgave him for sending her mixed messages at the bonfire gathering.

The last was the realization she wanted to kiss him. Badly.

Before they had fully risen from their crouch and he would be too tall, Sarah gave into her impulse in the only way she could act on the desire. She jumped up on her toes and planted a quick peck on his helmet.

The embarrassment and mortification washed over her  _ immediately _ .

He straightened slowly.

Sarah quickly stepped back.

“I’ll… Sorry, um - Goodnight,” she blurted, then darted for the generator room.

~*~

~* ! Spicy Scene ahead ! *~

~* Hot makeout warning tag. Notes at the end of scene with plot-relevant deets *~

This woman.

As she bolted away with a flushed face and her gaze anywhere but on him, Din Djarin reached out and grabbed her by the cross-strap. She didn’t try to fight him as he hauled her back, or when he wrapped his arms around her and gathered her slight frame against his chest.

Just a soft, strangled squeak.

“Sarah.”

“I’m sorry!” she exclaimed, stiff in his hold.

_ “Sarah.” _ He loosened his arms just enough that she could look up at him properly, and his heart lurched.

His eyes dropped to her lips, and Din Djarin  _ wanted. _ And this time, it wasn’t because she’d been purposefully stoking his desires like she had during their mental spar what felt like so long ago now. This was all on him.

She didn’t move away as he brought a hand up to brush his knuckles over her cheek, and he felt his heart constrict, sharp and painful, because he was conflicted.

He could not show her his face.

He could  _ not. _

An errant thought crossed his mind, and he could not shut it out.

She didn’t have to  _ see _ him, to be kissed by him. Could he ask that of her?

Should he?

Probably not.

“...Din?” she prompted quietly, eyes wide and searching as she slowly relaxed in his hold, and he made up his mind.

He trusted her. He wanted her. He’d worry about consequences later.

“Close your eyes,” he murmured, voice rough, lightheaded. “Keep them closed.”

As she did, he lifted the arm pressed to her back to see his control pad, then double-tapped the button to drop the ship into near total darkness. Tiny indicator lights and the door control panels glowed dimly, and given long enough, their eyes would adjust to the dark.

This wouldn’t take that long.

His hands shook as he pulled the helmet off his head. Cool air washed over his face, and for a moment, he wasn’t sure what to do with it, what to do with her.

He stepped back to set it on the bench, then found her in the dark. He could hear her short, quick breaths. As his hand came up to cup the side of her head, the sound stopped.

_ “Gar solus sol'tan,”  _ he murmured, and then he kissed her.

Or, he tried to. His nose bumped against her cheekbone as he missed, and she laughed softly at him, short and sweet, breath puffing over his jaw.

It didn’t take long for their lips to find each other, and his entire world quickly narrowed to the feel of her mouth on his and her hands that slid up his arms, over his neck, until her fingers were buried in his hair. She pulled at him as she went up on tip-toe, and then he was walking forward, herding her back until she bumped against the wall.

Nails scraped against his scalp and drove a low groan from deep in his throat, and he wasn’t prepared for when Sarah slipped her tongue past his parted lips, hesitant and probing.

_ “Osik.” _ The growled expletive barely registered in his mind, until he realized he’d been the one to say it.

“Too much?” she asked, breathless.

“No.” It was not nearly enough.

~*~

Sarah had so many questions.

Like how far he planned on going, or what exactly this meant to him. She thought she knew, but she’d long since learned the dangers of making assumptions. She didn’t have to wonder if he liked what they did, at least; she could feel his arousal, in more ways than one as his raging emotions smothered the room, and his body pressed her into the wall.

Questions could wait.

There was something distinctly charming about his obvious inexperience, and as she coaxed and encouraged him through example, Din Djarin proved to be a quick study.

When he dipped his head down to graze teeth along her neck, he peppered what little skin was exposed above her collar with nips and kisses, and she sucked in a sharp breath because he’d stumbled across a secret weakness.

He noticed.

Things got… Fuzzy, after that. She had no concept, none at all, of how much time had passed before she found herself hoisted up with her legs around his hips, forehead resting against his as they breathed together.

Her eyes were still closed, and it took all her restraint and what little grasp of sanity she had left not to peek. Just in case. She knew he’d turned the lights off, but she’d made a promise.

She wanted to look.

Instead, she traced his features with her fingers, and he let her. She explored the hard, strong line of his jaw, scratchy with stubble. A straight nose that swept out, and the unexpected tickle of a neatly trimmed mustache above thin lips. She wondered when he took the time to shave. His eyes were set wide beneath strong brows in a square face, a mix of flat planes and subtle, softer curves.

“Sarah,” he rumbled, one hand on her hip just below her belt, the other planted by her head on the wall. His hips and the crushing weight of his chest kept her pinned against the hard metal at her back, and she felt lightheaded from desire and exertion. She didn’t even care that the grip of his gun and something hard on his belt were digging into her inner thighs. It felt dangerous, yet she knew she was safe with him - and that made it exciting.

She wondered what he’d be like if he lost control, what might be set loose if they unraveled entirely.

She didn’t think either of them were ready for that.

“What color is your hair?” she begged, desperate for more details, dying to know him as no one else, or at least very few, did.

“Brown,” he gruffly answered, and it was  _ almost _ enough.

“Eyes?” she breathed as she clenched hers harder shut. She would  _ not _ look. She wouldn’t.

He moved, and she felt the feather-light press of his lips touch each of her eyelids, methodical and slow, right before he moved his hips against hers, just once.

Sarah sucked in a breath, dizzy. If he was trying to distract her, it worked.

“Brown,” he repeated in a hoarse whisper, and then he was kissing her again as he ground hard against her, until she thought she might come undone right then.

When he stopped abruptly and buried his face in her neck, she shuddered at the husky growl in his throat that he muffled against her. He was shaking, she realized, and something in the mood of the room changed that eased her back from the edge.

“Shhh,” she murmured, gently concerned, and curled her fingers in his hair as she held him to her, her other arm wrapped around his shoulders. She kissed the side of his head, the most she could reach at the moment.

“This wasn’t part of the plan.” His rough voice was muffled against her shirt, and she felt him breathe in her scent as he turned his face into her hair, just under her ear. It tickled.

“Plans suck anyways.” A wicked thought crossed her mind, and sent a burning heat straight down to her core. She turned her face to whisper in his ear, voice pitched low. “Though… The ones that  _ involve _ it are pretty nice,” she teased.

The noise he made sent shivers down her spine, and her toes curled when he nipped her ear. Sarah laughed quietly.

He put his hands on her waist and eased back. She dropped her legs from around him reluctantly, and he slowly lowered her until her boots met the floor.

“Not tonight,” he answered hoarsely, voice cracking, and Sarah felt her stomach flip.

“Maybe as a celebration for after we kick some Imperial butt,” she tried, then quietly laughed again as he hauled her into a hug. He kissed the top of her head, and her heart got that sappy, fuzzy feeling fluttering around in it.

_ “Burk’yc,” _ he growled, short and sharp in tone like a curse.

“I don’t know what that means, but I’m going to interpret it as ‘yes, please.’”

“Dangerous,” he translated. This time when he kissed her, it was slow and sweet, tender, and  _ much _ too short. “Goodnight, Sarah.”

“Wait.”

He didn’t step away, and she gathered her courage.

“Does this… Mean we’re a ‘thing’ now?” she asked tentatively. She didn’t want to think of what she’d do or feel if he declined. She wasn’t sure how she’d react if he agreed.

“Yes.”

The warm rush that fell over her was difficult to discern where her own emotions ended, and his began. She liked it.

She had nothing more to say, and after a moment of standing there grinning like an idiot in the dark, she felt him draw back. It was agonizing moments of waiting as she listened to his soft steps and the rustle of cloth and armor. A soft  _ thwshmph _ as, she assumed, he donned his helmet.

Then the lights were back on and she jumped, startled, because even through her eyelids the change was dramatic compared to the pitch black she’d been suspended in.

“You can look.”

Was that guilt in his voice?

Sarah opened her eyes, first just a peep, and then all the way. She was still smiling, and knew her too-warm face was probably as bright and red as a blaster bolt. The night-time lights were on in their dimmed setting, yet her eyes still hurt a little both from the comparable brightness, and from clenching them so hard.

“Goodnight, Din Djarin,” she murmured. She reached up to tuck hair behind her ear before remembering it’d been cut, and it reminded her of all that had happened today.

She was exhausted. Happy, delighted, even, but exhausted.

The helmet dipped, and he left the room without a word.

Sarah went to bed feeling giddy and whole.

~* ! Spicy Scene end ! *~

~ * Plot notes: Din removed helmet (in the pitch dark) to kiss Sarah. She did not see his face. They officially agreed they are a couple now. *~

Funny banter was had.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ****FOR THOSE WORRIED ABOUT (or hoping for) SMUT****
> 
> When Sarah and Din's relationship eventually hits that point (and yes, they absolutely will, I cannot be contained), I will be posting any smut scenes in a completely -separate- story collection. This is so those who do not wish to read such things can easily enjoy the story and its plot.
> 
> Bonus, it'll group them all together for those who like to revisit favorites ;P
> 
> I can tell you I already have at least one spicy scene written ;)
> 
> \---
> 
> Mando'a Translations: (Note: I excluded ones I feel are thoroughly explained in the story itself)
> 
> Ba'buir - Mars tells Sarah it means "Grandmother" which isn't entirely accurate. It *also* means Grandfather! Mando'a is a unique language in that many of their words are entirely gender-neutral, and it's not common for them to use what little gender-specific terminology they have.
> 
> Adiik - A child between the ages of 3 and 13 years old.
> 
> Woor Bes'Bev - See chapter 12's notes. It's Marrek's weird-ass instrument of doom and delight.
> 
> Laandur - "Delicate / Fragile." Not an insulting word on its own, but when you use it to describe someone, it -definitely- becomes that. It's a fairly rude insult for a Mandalorian, as they are (naturally) very concerned about physical prowess.
> 
> Ramikadyc - Forgive me, but I'm gonna straight up copy-pasta this one's definition from the lovely Mando'a dictionary: "commando state of mind - an attitude that he/ she can do anything, endure anything, and achieve the objective. A blend of complete confidence and extreme tenacity instilled in special forces during training. Can also be used informally to describe a determined, focused person."
> 
> The latter, informal use is where this word comes up in the story, as the Mandalorians gossiping about the new rookie amongst them switch from calling her "delicate" to "yeah that chick has a backbone, sweet."
> 
> Su cuy'gar: Used as "hello." Literally: "You're still alive."
> 
> Vheh'yaim - "Earth House" revisit Chapter 9's notes
> 
> Resol'nare - "Six Actions" aka the six primary tenants of what one must do to as a Mandalorian
> 
> Olarom - "Welcome!"
> 
> Slaat'ulik - "Mudhorn" aka the fierce rhino-like beast Din and Grogu kill together in the TV-show, which earns them their clan signet. This is my own mashed-together Mando'a word. Slaat is mud, and Ulik is "mount" which I am implying context to mean to be understood as 'animal.'
> 
> "Gar solus sol'tan" - Din says this to Sarah right before he kisses her; if you got all fluttery thinking he confessed his love, sorry to spoil the illusion... Nope! In the context Din uses it for, it means literally "You're individually one-of-a-kind."
> 
> Mando'a uses double-negatives to put emphasis on something (like saying "Awful bad" = REALLY REALLY BAD) so a friend and I decided it'd follow that they could use double-positives to emphasis the reverse!
> 
> Din is basically saying that he thinks Sarah is incredibly unique, singular, etc. Who doesn't like being told they're special? <3
> 
> Kudos to my friend Numi for the suggestion. I was at a loss on what he might say to her, and he came up with the translation.
> 
> Osik - Mando'a swear word. "Shit"
> 
> \---
> 
> FUN TRIVIA: I swear the notes here took longer to write than the actual chapter. I've heard at least one person likes reading these, and so I continue to put effort into them xD
> 
> Big kudos to http://mandoa.org/dictionary.html for supplying a very easy-to-reference dictionary of Mando'a. One of several sources I utilize and cherish.
> 
> The dances in this chapter are my own invention; I was quite taken with the idea the wiki's lore painted of Mandalorian's that they are a very passionate, live-in-the-moment-while-you-can kind of culture. I think I read a mention somewhere of "traditional singing done by beating fists against breastplates and backplates of other Mandos" for group festivities, and I thought it'd be cool to explore that in dancing.
> 
> Their language is very passionate and expressive. And in my world setting... so are their dances!
> 
> Big thanks to my Mom, who actually helped me choreograph Din and Sarah's dance and practiced with me. (no, we didn't do the fun flip xD)
> 
> All in all... this was a very fun chapter to write, and I even had fun going in and editing it. A lot got added to this one before it was posted, a few pages worth at least.
> 
> Anyhow... enjoy!
> 
> And yes, Chapter 14 is under its final editing pass, and I've just finished writing the first draft of chapter 19. Expect updates to be a little slower in the near future, because I want to stay ahead of publishing so I have buffer-space to fix things.


	14. The Demonstration

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Boba Fett? Boba Fett where?

Sarah didn’t want to wake up.

When the generator room hissed opened, she groaned into her blankets where she laid sprawled on her belly, face buried in folded arms. The narrow room was  _ just _ long enough she could stretch out in it. She’d slept in her clothes, partially because they were comfortable and warm, and partially because she knew she was going to have to get used to living in them, day and night. Might as well go all-in right off the bat.

“Sarah.” Din Djarin’s boot kicked her leg. She rolled over, stared up at him, and resisted the urge to beg for just  _ five _ more minutes. Maybe ten.

“Ugh.” She sat up. “Grogu up?”

“Everyone but you is up. You have three minutes to meet me outside. You slept through breakfast,” he revealed, then walked off without another word.

“Wha-- Three minutes?!” she cried as he jumped down the ladderwell, and Sarah scrambled out of the room as she grabbed at her harness. That  _ wasn’t _ enough time! Mars was going to kill her for missing her morning shift.

“Three minutes,” he repeated from downstairs, entirely unflappable.

“You’re late,” he informed her from where he stood at the end of the ramp of the Razor Crest’s side door, arms folded over his chest, severe and indomitable. If Sarah had possessed any illusions of their morning being awkward following last night’s… activities, they were swiftly being dealt away with. She didn’t dare ask, but she suspected he had been counting the seconds, because she  _ knew _ she wasn’t more than half a minute over. She had practically flown through the ship after strapping on her weapons.

“I had to use the bathroom,” she quipped, temper riled in the face of his infuriatingly calm aura. “You could have woken me up sooner if there’s such a rush!”

“I did.”

“...Oh.” She believed him, and her irritation warred with a sudden appreciation of the fact he’d apparently let her sleep in. Oops. “Where’s Grogu?” she asked instead, as she jogged to catch up with him as he struck off towards the center of the sprawling encampment.

“At lessons, Mars picked him up.”

“Are you angry at me?” she questioned, wary. He didn’t feel angry, but maybe  _ this _ was his version of ‘awkward.’

“No. We have somewhere to be.”

“The mission debriefing.”

“Yes.”

With nothing more to say, she kept pace with him through the crisp, early morning air in silence, and tried very hard not to think about what they’d done last night.

Sarah wasn’t particularly surprised when they met up with Sabine in the middle of camp, then set off for the training grounds. When they arrived, five other warriors awaited them.

Four were human, and one was a Twi’lek. All wore their helmets, and all stood in various states of casual attention that didn’t beley the aura of lethality they emanated.

So, normal Mandalorians.

Sabine clapped her on the shoulder and stepped into place beside her, and Sarah straightened her back without thinking, pinned by the several gazes all looking directly at her.

“Meet our rookie Initiate - Sarah of clan _ Slaat’ulik. _ Sarah, meet Luek,” Sabine began, and one of the five warriors stepped forward. He was a tall figure with narrow shoulders and thick, black armor that had clearly seen its share of battle. He nodded once, short and curt. “Demolitions expert. He’ll be keeping watch above our heads during the trek.

“You’ve already met Afera,” she continued as Luek stepped back into place. Afera’s red helmet dipped once, but the man didn’t budge. Sarah heard Sabine scoff lightly. “He’s our sour old coot. You don’t meet many Mandalorians with gray hair, and that should tell you something about his level of experience. He’ll be taking point during our escort.”

“Point?” Sarah questioned, and got a flat look from Sabine.

“Lead. When we set out from the dropoff, he’ll be calling the shots. He has command through the pass until we’ve reached our last checkpoint, and his word until then is final. He’ll be in the most dangerous position, ahead of us. If we meet trouble, he’s the first to find it.”

Sarah nodded once, and felt the first inkling of a sense of danger trickle down her spine.

It  _ also _ came with the tiniest thrill of excitement, and she wasn’t sure what to think about that, so put it out of her mind as she turned to the next warrior.

“Kicker, expert in hand-to-hand and melee weaponry, but don’t underestimate his aim. He’ll be guarding our rear with Soren,” she added as both warriors stepped forward in unison. Kicker was the tall Twi’lek, in subdued blue-and-gray armor and a modified helmet. Sarah decided she liked him right off the bat - there was something cheery and pleasant about his presence, and he offered her a wave which she returned with a nod. 

Soren remained silent, almost mellow, as he stood at deceptive ease beside Kicker. Though all Mandalorians had the same general theme of armor, there was something uncannily similar about these two’s sets in both paint-job and in style. The only difference besides Kicker’s modified helmet was that Soren’s blue being much darker in shade. He reminded her a little of Din Djarin with his calm, still composure, and the sense he was ready to move at any moment.

“Soren’s our medic, and the one who ran the first recon-pass for us to build a plan off of. He also happens to be a  _ great _ singer once he’s had a few shots of  _ tihaar,” _ she added with a grin, and the blue helmet sharply turned to look at her, though he didn’t comment.

Yep. He reminded her of Din.

“Last but not least, Dakara.” As the woman in maroon armor stepped forward past Kicker and Soren, she cocked a hip and looked Sarah up and down.

If it was meant to intimidate her, it didn’t work.

“She’ll be on the ridge with Din on scope duty, and be calling times for watch shifts. We’ll be depending on her eyes to know when it’s clear to proceed or if we need to drop back and find cover. She’ll also be on sniper detail, if things get hairy. Her tracer color is orange - if you see an orange blaster bolt, it’s hers.”

Sarah had a new appreciation for the woman in front of her, if she could afford the expensive components for modifying her gun’s blaster gas fuel. Orange wasn’t common.

“Now, then. We’ve been told you can trick the eyes and make us see what isn’t there, or hide what  _ is. _ Demonstrate,” Sabine ordered, and Sarah stiffened, then relaxed. Her fear at exposure was slightly less than the almost  _ giddy _ rush of excitement over the opportunity to exercise her talent - and for a good cause.

Her eyes slid sideways to assess Sabine’s watchful expression, then flicked over the others. Everyone had eyes on her, and she suspected at least one or two of them might have experience with mind-tricks, if Marrek and Sabine were any indication.

She could do this.

“Right. So, who here is under oath to not bare their faces? Just Din? Great. Well, don’t let me take your helmets off - and don’t remove them yourself. If you do, you’re out,” she declared, and smiled.

It took her fifteen grueling minutes and a painful knee to the gut in the beginning, delivered by Afera when she’d purposefully fumbled her ruse without using her abilities in order to help disarm their expectations.

At the end of it, she had six warriors at various stages of defeat or relaxed ease for those who were still caught up in their distractions, and six colorful helmets arranged proudly in front of the training equipment chest. The only one she’d left alone was Din Djarin, and he had silently watched her work from the sidelines with folded arms and a distinct aura of unease, mingled with pride.

She sat down on the chest while Luek’s broody, dark green eyes followed her every movement, and waited. Dakara sat next to him, head bowed and elbows on her knees. She’d been a tough one - the moment the sniper had lifted the helmet off her head, she’d remembered why she wasn’t supposed to, and had nearly ruined Sarah’s advantage in tricking the others to follow.

Afera, caught up in conversation with Sabine over tactical discussion, was the first of those unaware to remember what he was  _ supposed _ to be doing.

Sabine’s sentence trailed off as she noticed Afera’s attention diverted, and it wasn’t long before Kicker and Soren - old childhood friends, she’d learned - noticed the change in the atmosphere as all eyes turned towards Sarah and her hard-earned trophies.

Her head hurt, her growling, empty stomach was ready to hurl, and she had never felt better.

_ “Osik,” _ Kicker swore, then reached up to pat his exposed, blue, fleshy head. “You are terrifying.”

“I’m glad you’re on our side,” Sabine said, emphatic.  _ “Jetii _ Kannan would have liked you.”

Sarah didn’t know who that was, but the fearful admiration made her heart clench and her breath hitch, and she swallowed thickly. Din Djarin finally broke away from where he’d stood as a silent witness, and came to stand beside her.

Under the weight of six gazes in various states of awe, fear, and outrage, his presence helped steady her freshly fried nerves.

Actually demonstrating hadn’t been the part she’d been so worried about.

It was the aftermath.

“How?” Soren asked shortly. He had a rugged face marked by old scars, and was blind in one of his deep gray eyes.

“It was different for each of you. The hardest part was ensuring you didn’t warn each other,” she said carefully. “Luek and Dakara nearly gave the whole thing up, since they realized what happened pretty quick. If this had been a combat situation, I’d be dead.” Of that, she had little doubt.

“I got tricked into a drink - I was thirsty,” Dakara revealed with a grimace. It was such a simple, innocuous mistake… and those were the kind of things that got you killed.

“At least one of us knows what happened,” Kicker groused, though he smiled with an eerie brightness to his eyes that made Sarah rethink her initial impression of liking him. She didn’t like that look. “I don’t even remember why I took it off.”

“How?” Afera demanded, his voice clear and rough. It was strange to see an old man in armor - he looked more like he belonged at the tavern telling stories or on a porch watching over grandchildren. His buzz-cut had a silver, shiny sheen to it.

Sarah didn’t dare decline his request for more information. Not to  _ this _ Mandalorian. She swallowed, then explained.

“It’s fairly easy to get a sense of a person’s general mood, and any strong… Instinctual things. Like if you’re tired, or hungry. I didn’t always use a mind trick - It’s no good if I over-use it, because the more it’s done, the easier it is for you to realize your thoughts are being meddled with.” She nodded at Din Djarin. “I can’t really trick him anymore because we’ve been training extensively together, and he can recognize my presence. Familiarity breeds recognition. I alternated between being persuasive in conversation, and lacing key commands or suggestions with the Force.”

She nodded at Kicker, who still had that creepy light in his eyes she found unsettling.

“You were distracted by Soren and your overconfidence that you wouldn’t be tricked, and willing to see him fail this test for the entertainment value. Right?”

Soren cast the Twi’lek a sour glance as the warrior in question jerked up.

“You read my mind that clearly?” he asked warily.

“No. I got a general sense of your mood, then used that and what little information I had gathered about you to make an educated guess for what tactic might work best. Your sense of humor is pretty obvious once I coaxed you into talking, and you seemed eager both to impress and to… How do I put it - Joke with your friend? Banter? You didn’t take this as seriously as you should have,” she summed up, and tried hard not to feel awkward about delivering criticism to someone so very obviously her senior.

“You both stand close together and stayed that way even once the demonstration began, and are generally very attentive to one another; your feet point towards him when you stand at ease, and your armor styles are so similar, I figured it meant some kind of connection. When I got you talking about it, you proved my theory correct, and that’s when I was able to find a way to distract you enough you were both able to be convinced. You work as a pair, function as a pair, and so you share your weaknesses and strengths as a single unit.”

“Damn,” Kicker said softly, and rocked back on his heel. “You got us sorted.”

“So you’re saying we failed because this idiot wasn’t taking it seriously, and I trusted him to watch my back?” Soren asked slowly.

Sarah swallowed.

“Uh… Yeah, pretty much. You were much harder to convince. I had to get your mind off the test completely, because you were still looking for a difference.”

Kicker’s expression was halfway between horrified and guilt-stricken, and Soren only spared him a cool, level look before he went to fetch his helmet.

“She’ll have no problem tricking those dockyard idiots,” Luek said with a short scoff. “I take back what I said about this being a fool’s errand, Sabine - This could work.”

“Now that we’ve established that… Let’s talk details,” Sabine said, and clapped her hands together with an impish grin. “Soren, pull the map up.”

~*~

Two weeks later, Sabine Wren tugged at the grey technician’s uniform she’d pulled on over her armor with distaste. It smelled like fish and sweat, as it hadn’t been washed since being stolen off its owner. Necessary, in order to sell the illusion she was an active worker in the dockyards to sharp-nosed Quarren.

Still, it didn’t do anything to improve her mood. She hadn’t slept well on the Razor Crest despite a valiant effort, and they had flown the better part of the previous day and all through the night in order to line their timing up. Din Djarin had swapped pilot shifts with Dakara so they didn’t have to stop.

Sabine pulled on the black cap that completed her Imperial uniform, then yanked its brim low over her face. Her helmet had to be left behind for this mission, and it left her feeling exposed and on edge. She’d also been obliged to dye her hair a muted brown, and thought with passion how she would make the Imperial’s pay for having a hand in ruining good artistic color.

The thought that kept coming back to her, though, was that all it would take was a single shot to the head, and she’d be out for the count.

Her eyes darted to Sarah, who stood next to her wearing the outfit of an Imperial officer that they’d converted into a medic’s kit. They had tried to get two technician’s uniforms, but the second one had gotten… too messy to be useful.

The Razor Crest’s floor bucked beneath her feet as it was brought down into its final landing phase. When the door in front of them hissed open, Sabine followed Afera out as Sarah fell into step beside her.

“Last equipment check,” Afera barked, and led by example as he did a once-over on both his vambraces and a sleek, silver blaster off his hip.

Sabine had already done an equipment check before she’d donned her uniform, but now she enlisted Sarah’s help in making sure her armor was indeed covered. They’d added some padding over it with an extra shirt and some cloth scraps, in order to prevent hard lines from showing under the fabric.

“Don’t wear your hat so low, or they’ll realize you’re hiding your eyes,” Sarah informed her, then reached up to adjust Sabine’s brim. “You need to blend in, which means acting like you belong there. My tricks only do so much - you have to already be selling it.”

Sabine grimaced, and accepted the counsel.

“All good?” she asked, and listened with half an ear as the others around them went through their gear. Dakara and Din Djarin soon joined them outside, and both went straight into the woods to take up their positions on the north ridge.

Sabine watched them go until Afera called them to order, and they fell into a single-file formation as he led the way through the forest.

It was, all things considered, quite a lovely hike. The air was still frigid from the nightly freeze, and the sun had yet to breach the horizon. It left the world around them in a hushed twilight as fog crawled over the ground, from where steam began to rise off of shallow ponds and wet rocks.

Several minutes later, Sabine got her first glimpse of the terrain in person as they left the woods behind, dropped down a short, steep trail, then stepped out onto solid stone. It stretched out for miles in either direction, dotted here and there with raised ridges and shattered boulders. It framed a sheltered valley by the shoreline to the North. The space there housed six industrial warehouses, and a dockyard for space transports to bring goods directly into the facility grounds. Sheltered on three sides by the natural rock formations that were fortified with heavy weaponry, and a choppy bay strewn with jagged rocks and shallow sandbars, it was a secure position.

It was a bleak sight, and it made Sabine’s heart clench. It reminded her too strongly of what she knew her homeworld to look like - traumatically scarred and maybe beyond hope of repair.

She knew that like Mandalore, the land here had not always been barren. Strip mining, industrial pollution, and excessive clearcutting had destroyed the native ecosystem hugging the curved bay some two miles ahead of them. Over the years it had created a slab of rock as heavy rainfalls had washed away the crumbled topsoil, and left behind a large, imposing frame of depressing gray dotted with watch towers and landing pads for spacecraft. Cut through the middle of it was a natural ravine that had once been a river. It had long since been filled and worked into a road for ground vehicles to enter the valley.

“Keep moving,” Sabine ordered as she caught Sarah lingering too long in her own examination of the environment. The rookie jolted, then fell quickly into step behind her as they made their way towards the first checkpoint.

It was a sheltered alcove framed on almost all sides by rock, and offered a good view of the first stretch of the ravine’s path before it curved back on itself. 

Sabine held back as Afera crept out to the ledge, and she watched as the elder Mandalorian activated the comm link built into his helmet.

“Checkpoint one reached,” he said quietly. A brief silence as he no doubt got Dakara’s answering report, then he peered out and deployed a grappling line to the slab of stone above their heads. Sabine watched as he lowered himself down into the ravine, then at his signal, gestured the others with her forward. Cable locks were sunk into the deep stone and their anchors checked. Luek would be the last to go, and remained at the very edge on look-out.

“Nice and cozy,” Kicker teased quietly as he wrapped an arm around her waist, and Sabine held on tight as they stepped off the edge together.

“Soren’ll be jealous,” she answered with a grin as their feet met the earth. The man in question followed them shortly after, delivering Sarah safe to the ground with them.

“Cut the noise,” Afera growled, and Sabine shut her mouth. Once Luek dropped, they pulled the lines loose and retracted them, then set out.

Gravel crunched beneath their boots as they walked down the wide road. From above it had seemed like a narrow, claustrophobic space, but now that she was actually in it Sabine could appreciate - and mourn for - what this area must have looked like before it’d been gutted and filled. The path stretched out wide enough to allow the passage of four or five speeders side-by-side, with room on the edges where massive boulders and old, sun-bleached tree trunks lay like snapped bones. It felt like a graveyard.

She hoped it wouldn’t become theirs.

She kept pace with Sarah in the middle of the group, pleased to note the woman was keeping her guard up, and paid attention to the surroundings as the rest of them were.

So far, so good.

She glanced at Afera as movement caught her eye. He lifted his arm and gestured sharply to the right, and as a unit they bolted for cover behind the rocks and wooden debris. Sabine was careful not to snag the fabric of her coveralls on the sharp branches as she ducked down.

Utter silence for several heartbeats, and then she could hear distant footsteps and the rolling wheels of a heavy ground vehicle’s approach.

It was maddening not to be able to see what was happening. Her position left her entirely cut off from any glimpse at the road, but she saw Sarah’s grim expression as the Initiate peeked between dense underbrush from her nearby spot, then dropped silently into a lower crouch.

They stayed in place for what only amounted to a few minutes, but it felt like hours. Sabine  _ hated _ waiting.

Finally, Afera stood and stepped out into the open, then verbally ordered them to follow.

Without the need to stop and hide, the walk through the pass was roughly estimated at a forty five minute trek. The sun began to slip down the top of the cliffs as they moved deeper into the terrain, cutting through shadows as it brought the jagged scenery into a haunting, sharp relief of dancing blocks of light and dark.

Sabine sucked in a breath at the report of three quick blaster shots from up ahead, where they could not see around a distant curve, and dove for cover with the others. They secured themselves on a raised ridge of fallen rock, bellies to the ground. It was not the best of hiding spaces, but so long as none of the oncoming personnel looked closely, they’d be safe.

“Dakara, report,” Afera growled softly. Sabine was right next to him, and it was the only reason she was able to make out his voice. She glanced around to check the state of the others - Luek had the most secure position, crouched behind them all in a deep depression from a rock that had rolled free at some point, rifle in hand and ready to provide cover fire. Kicker and Soren flanked the entire group, each wedged in-between the shorter boulders, kept just out of sight of the road.

She clenched her jaw as she recognized Sarah’s predicament - she was the most likely one to be spotted, flat on her belly on open gravel and dirt, situated down to Sabine’s left on the steep slope. A clump of dead grass hid her face from the trail, but if someone looked too hard or caught the pale glimpse of her skin against the dark scenery, they’d be compromised.

Sabine reached over and tapped two fingers on Afera’s elbow, and his helmet swung her way.

Without a word she nodded her head at Sarah, and she saw the warrior stiffen.

“Fix it. Thirty seconds,” he hissed.

Sabine kept count in her head as she pushed herself up onto hands and knees, then carefully slid down the loose rocks to the rookie’s spot, scowling at the loud noise of falling stone in the comparably quiet space. Sarah looked her way, openly grimaced at her, and sharply gestured her back.

Sabine ignored it and kneeled beside her.

“Drop back, you’ll be seen,” she hissed. This  _ wasn’t _ the time for their rookie to get cocky.

Sarah grabbed her by the collar and hauled her flat to the ground, and Sabine let her only because resisting would make more noise. She was painfully aware of Afera’s gaze on them, and caught Soren’s helmet briefly tip their way.

“I have to  _ see _ them to trick them reliably,” Sarah whispered back “This is a bad spot for everyone.”

Sabine wasn’t sure if she wanted to commend her for taking initiative on doing her job, or berate her for making an already dangerous situation even more risky.

Thirty seconds was almost up, and Sabine openly scowled as she edged back and dropped to her stomach on dusty earth, tucked behind a jutting rock.

There was nothing they could do now but wait.

The seconds ticked past, and the last of loose pebbles finally went still just as Sabine heard the sounds of footsteps and tires approaching.

_ ‘There weren’t supposed to be this many patrols,’ _ she thought, and wondered what they’d been shooting at.

She got her answer moments later as the soldiers came abreast of their hiding space, and held her breath. A transport with an uncovered back rolled over the ground slowly. Three storm troopers flanked each side of the vehicle, and one trailed behind. Red and gray bodied lizards scurried over the ground, chasing after the formation as they flocked around it with quiet hisses. Sabine wrinkled her nose as the faint stench of something rotten and foul reached her, and eyed the glimpse of metal canisters she could see arranged on the flatbed of the vehicle.

One of the scurrying lizards suddenly rushed forward at a trooper’s legs, and he shot twice and missed before the thing bit at his ankle. Another soldier intervened and stomped on its back, and the creature shrieked as it flailed, spine broken, then fell silent when it was shot.

“I hate these things,” the first soldier said, now out of sight. More shots were fired, chasing off some of the lizards even as some scurried right back at them.

Sabine’s gaze slid to watch Sarah as the soldiers conversed openly, and caught when the woman’s shoulders suddenly drew taut. A moment later, she saw why.

A lizard had climbed up the ridge and looked the rookie dead in the eyes, their noses inches from each other in the scraggly underbrush.

Tension crackled in the air.

Sabine let out her held breath in a soft gasp as the creature suddenly whirled around and scurried away. Relief washed over her; they were safe.

“Permission to break formation and clear off the pests, Sir?” one of the soldiers asked. The roll of wheels stopped.

“Granted.”

Sabine swallowed thickly, then slowly slid her left sleeve up to expose her vambrace, the softest hiss of fabric over cloth-wrapped metal.

Shots rang out as the soldiers opened fire on the reptiles, and Sabine clenched her jaw as several of the things rushed up the rocky slope. One darted over her legs and tucked itself against her side, its slitted eyes a deep, radiant gold that mocked her with its farce of trust.

_ ‘I am  _ not _ saving your scaley hide,’ _ she thought uncharitably.

Footsteps approached their hiding spot, and she caught in the corner of her eye Luek’s movement on the right as he shifted forward to take aim, finger on the trigger.

Sarah abruptly shifted sideways and forward, her entire body going taut and rigid.

Sabine was acutely aware of her heart as it hammered in her chest, until it felt like it lodged in her throat and stuck there. Then all at once, the approaching steps backed off.

“All clear,” one of the distorted voices said, this time in the familiar voice of a Clonetrooper. Sabine shuddered. There weren’t many of those left these days.

“What? Aren’t there more in the rocks?” another soldier asked, and Sabine heard the lizard beside her start to hiss. She elbowed it, and the ridiculous thing fell silent.

“They dove into burrows; they’re gone,” the clone clarified.

“Back in formation,” the leader ordered, and the engine revved loudly. A moment later, the wheels lurched forward with a creaking crunch.

Two minutes later, Afera finally stood up from hiding, and beckoned them to follow as he slid down on his feet to the road.

“Nice work,” Sabine praised quietly, and clapped Sarah on the back as they all regrouped. Relief eased the tension off her shoulders, a welcomed change.

The rookie nodded once, then focused on dusting off her uniform and straightening her cap. Sabine belatedly did the same - it wouldn’t do to look messy. The fish smell might be tolerated due to the working environment, but the Imps would definitely notice the gray dust of stone and dirt on an otherwise clean uniform.

At least it blended in with the fabric. Mostly.

A soft hiss by her feet had her looking down, and Sabine nudged the lizard that tailed her with a foot.

“Go on, get,” she whispered.

Reptilian eyes watched her, then blinked once with side-ways, clear lids. She nudged it again, harder this time, and it chirped before scurrying off. A tingle ran over her skin, and with it came a vague sense of foreboding.

Sarah shot her a glance with furrowed brows, and Sabine waved her off, lips pressed into a thin line.

The rest of their hike was blessedly uneventful, and they had better cover to secure themselves behind as patrols or transports rolled by.

She smelled, rather than saw, at least two more trucks hauling whatever refuse it was that stank worse than a Kybuck’s backside.

As they gathered into a group at the end of the pass behind natural cover, Sabine quietly asked Sarah to do a mutual once-over on their uniforms. They smoothed wrinkles and adjusted the sharp creases, and Sabine fixed the rookie’s skewed hat.

“Checkpoint two reached,” Afera rumbled quietly, finger to his helmet’s comm button. He turned to look at her, and waited until she was finished adjusting Sarah’s utility belt and the bacta tanks hanging off of it to address her. “We’ll hold tight at the planned positions. Good luck, both of you.”

“Last equipment check,” Sabine ordered as the others moved off, and confirmed both that her comm link was still set to mute, and that her copy of the data-stick was secure. She watched Sarah do the same, and then the woman slipped a hand in her boot. The hilt of a slender, silver knife peeked out before being shoved back in securely.

“All set,” the rookie said grimly, then met Sabine’s gaze and grinned. It was somewhat unnerving to watch the tension roll away from Sarah as she assumed her acting role - the easy-going confidence of an Imperial medic who had every reason to be here, and would be generally well respected.

Show time.

~*~

“Fennec, strap in. We have our heading,” Boba Fett announced from the cockpit of  _ Slave I _ , sleeve pushed up as he examined the dials on his trace-cuff. He lingered over it to commit the data to memory, just in case the device glitched out on him again. He had no explanation for the inconsistency in signal; If the Mandalorian was fortunate enough to possess a jammer able to block the custom-configured frequency, then it shouldn’t have allowed active pings to be sent back and forth in the first place when the sister device had been planted on his ship.

When it was clear the readouts were holding steady, at least for the immediate moment, Boba hastily made his way up the ladder to the central controls.

“Finally. This place reeks,” his companion answered from out of sight. Light footsteps sounded on the metal floor as she entered the tubular open space, then neatly slotted herself into one of two passenger’s seats below the pilot’s station.

As the ship roared to life and lifted off its wet, dockyard landing pad, the central command chassis rotated to keep its occupants upright as the ship flipped into a vertical flight orientation.

“Are they still on the planet?” Fennec asked.

“According to this, they are - and holding position. One, two hours at most,” he added as he adjusted settings. It was a risky maneuver to transfer power from the pre-primed repeating cannons into the main drive, but it was a chance he was willing to take in order to give the ship an extra edge of speed.

His elusive quarry would not stay ahead of him for much longer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun trivia: Writing an angsty, pissed-off Boba Fett is probably one of my favorite things ever. Why? Because it amuses me to torment characters in my stories (all authors are some level of sadist, prove me wrong), and it's -especially- fun to work with one who is a very capable, powerful individual.
> 
> It's almost as good as writing an awkward Din Djarin.
> 
> Boba: "GIVE ME BACK MY ARMOR REEEEE"  
> Me: "Hah, you're so cute, you think you'll get it that easily. KEEP CHASING THAT PLOT ARMOR, MY MAN."
> 
> This isn't really a spoiler since it should be... hopefully rather obvious? But his homing beacon isn't working "right" because of Sarah's presence, and for part of the time because the ship was parked by the mountains with the ore that scrambles many technological equipment sensors. Now that the Razor Crest is well away from them, and Sarah's a few miles away from the ship and focused on other things... ;D
> 
> This chapter was a pretty short one, but very crucial. It also took me ages to get into the flow of it, because at first I was soooooo booooored writing about the nitty gritty of a stealth-op mission through a dangerous canyon pass. I knew I couldn't just skip it because it's pretty important in my opinion to see how they function as a team, and how they get there. I also knew I didn't want them to get caught in it for plot reasons, which left little in the way for any action-packed scenes, and eventually I settled on exploring the tension that a high-stakes situation brings about.
> 
> The lizards aren't any specific species... So it's up to your lovely imaginations to fill in ;P
> 
> \---
> 
> Mando'a Translations:
> 
> Slaat'ulik - "Mudhorn" See chapter 13 for more notes.
> 
> Osik - Curse word, basically "shit"
> 
> Jetii - "Jedi"
> 
> Kybuck - Not a word in Mando'a, but the name of a rideable, furry creature native to the Wookie's homeworld of Kashyyyk, according to Wookiepedia. (man that's a LOT of y's, one might ask... why? :D)
> 
> "BOBA FETT? BOBA FETT WHERE?"  
> it be more like  
> "WHERE THE #$&@ IS THE RAZOR CREST? RAZOR CREST /WHERE?!"/
> 
> Don't worry, Boba. I'm sure you'll catch up to them.
> 
> Eventually.
> 
> :D


	15. Knowledge

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ok. I admit. This is my favorite chapter. Period.
> 
> It was SO much fun to write. And it's gone through probably at least seven editing passes at different times because I wanted to keep improving it, and there's just so much going on, there were a lot of little, nuanced details to sort out.
> 
> Big thanks to Numi, who gave me SO MANY IDEAS for writing this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes usually go at the bottom of my chapters, but there were too many notes, and I didn't want to delete anything, so I'm splitting them up for this one ;P
> 
> \---
> 
> Ok, I know I said you should expect chapter updates to be a little slow, but I -really- want to get to Boba Fett's chapter, and this one happens to be my absolute favorite to begin with, so... You benefit from my indulgence. ;P
> 
> Edit: Idk wtf my brain was doing, but for some reason I thought Boba's chapter was after this one. Nah. Sorry to get your hopes up, he's a few chapters out yet. I guess my brain just wanted any excuse to make me post this one XD
> 
> FUN TRIVIA:  
> *All* of the comm-link chatter in this entire story was built off and enhanced by the layman's run-down Numilani gave me on radio communications. He's been an incredible asset for bringing some realism into this story, especially on the military and tech aspects. Give him a pat on the back, he deserves it.

Sarah felt like a live wire, pumped with electricity and just waiting for an excuse to short out whatever was stupid enough to touch her. She and Sabine assumed a casual conversation as they strolled across the complex grounds, enemies surrounding them in multitudes. She felt as small as an ant in this massive complex, unable to see the full breadth of it as towering buildings, clusters of storage bays, and parked shipcraft blocked the view.

As exposed as it made her feel, it also granted a measure of security. The only reason their plan had a solid chance at working was because it was so large, they were unlikely to be immediately recognized as outsiders.

Sabine led the way, having put in far more hours studying the diagrams they had on the external layout of the base, though Sarah had a general idea of where they were. She steered them towards the sixth Warehouse, the one closest to the checkpoint they’d just left.

They walked unchallenged through the wide bay doors, flanked on each side by a pair of Stormtroopers on guard duty. One nodded at Sarah, and she returned the friendly greeting with a smile and nod of her own.

Inside, they found a massive open space piled with neatly organized pallets of heavy equipment, great piles of stock metal, and unmarked crates that no doubt held an assortment of weaponry or other goods. It was narrower than the outside suggested, each side of the building and the far back half walled off for other rooms in the multi-purpose facility. Signs marked the dizzying array of corridors, and Sabine led them in the direction of the mess hall and officer’s quarters.

She could feel the uneasy tension rolling off of the Mandalorian, and focused on not letting it distract her as she kept up the subtle illusion that they were no one worth taking notice of. She used her ability sparingly, mostly on the guards posted around the place if one of them looked their way, wary of finding someone who might be familiar enough with the touch of the Force to recognize something was amiss.

“I’m starved, lunch break has never been so welcome,” Sabine enthused as she took a turn down a hall and into narrow corridors, and left the open hanger behind.

“Even with what’s on the menu?” Sarah asked, and snorted. Someone nearby overheard, and offered an emphatic agreement as they passed.

They took another turn, and after a minute found themselves isolated in a long corridor marked by closed doors. Name plates marked the offices of several staff members, and an empty meeting lounge that lacked a terminal.

“Where else would one be?” Sarah asked quietly.

“Might be one in the hanger bay at the back - they wouldn’t keep it near any of the exits or entrances. Could also be in the mess hall, or maybe in another officer’s lounge.”

“Right. Mess hall first, hanger bay next?” Sarah suggested. Sabine pursed her lips, then nodded.

As they turned to leave, static sounded right before a voice spilled out over the intercom system, from a speaker in the corner of the room.

_ “All uniformed personnel report for inspection in hangar bay section 22-3-A.” _ The order repeated, and Sarah watched as Sabine risked precious seconds to draw her comm link.

“Change of plans; inspection call. Add forty minutes to expected timeframe,” Sabine said shortly, then clicked it off after they received Afera’s short acknowledgement.

“We’re going to have to split up,” Sarah pointed out.

“Fix your collar, stand straight, salute like I showed you when the officer passes. Do  _ not _ look them in the eyes, unless addressed directly. If anyone questions you, tell them you’re a new transfer. We’ll have one hour to bail if that happens, in case they check logs on their recent drop. What’s your TK number?”

“MRC-587,” Sarah replied, then reached out and put a hand to Sabine’s shoulder. She could hear footsteps in the hall, and they didn’t have much time. She closed her eyes and concentrated, and strengthened the wards around her partner. She couldn’t deflect attention completely, as an absolute absence would draw  _ more _ notice, but she could give her an edge in blending in.

If it would even work. She didn’t actually know.

At the very least, the act alone helped settle both her own nerves, and that of Sabine - Sarah could feel the slight ease of tension in the muscle under her hand, and in the air around her.

“Good luck,” she whispered, and they stepped out of the room just as a group of other officers and soldiers jogged into sight. They mingled with the crowd, and Sarah let herself be whisked away.

~*~

Din stood on watch duty beside Dakara’s shoulder, pulse rifle at the ready, half hidden behind an old, scraggly tree. The woman next to him had an eye to her scope as she tracked what was happening miles away, and he’d been listening in silence to the radio chatter as the group progressed.

His eyes drifted up from the distant bowl of the valley complex to the sky as he caught movement, frowned, then swore as he recognized what it was.

Dakara didn’t bat an eye as he told her what he saw, keeping to her assigned job.

“Afera, Imperial Cruiser inbound. Pull out - mission’s compromised.”

“Negative. Inspection already called - Mandos are en route.”

This time when Din Djarin swore, Dakara echoed his sentiments.

~*~

Sarah had never been in the military, or even an organized militia. As she stood ‘at attention’ in the small column of medical officers of the Imperial Army that was  _ supposed _ to be a straggling, leftover remnant of a bygone era, she really wished she had even once had exposure prior to this so she had some idea of experience to draw off of.

Sabine’s pep talk and the two weeks spent going over Imperial protocols and basic drill movements hadn’t been nearly enough.

She had no idea where her partner was, and she had a sinking feeling she wasn’t going to know for some time. Hundreds of officers, soldiers, and various staff members that ran the facilities had been summoned to the warehouse next door to the one they’d been in. It turned out to be a docking bay for large spacecraft, and boasted a central communications division in the back end.

And there, just to her right, was a terminal. The objective of their mission a mere twelve yards away, it mocked her silently.

She stood in the middle of a group of like-uniformed men and women, all standing straight, tall, and perfect in their posture.

Sarah mimicked them as best she could, chin tipped up, shoulders back and dropped, spine straight, and her feet perfectly perpendicular. She  _ almost _ felt the part.

For several minutes after they had assembled, nothing happened.

Then the massive doors of the building groaned and slid open on deep, well oiled tracks in the ground. Sarah sucked in a sharp breath through her nose; she was glad no one could hear it over the sound of roaring engines as a Lambda-class Imperial Shuttle entered, it’s lower tier wings slowly folding up to prepare for its landing sequence.

Wind whipped through the long open space and disturbed uniforms as it kicked up scant dust on the ground. It skittered across the floor, tumbled over the toes of her shiny black boots.

Sarah was a little disturbed at how utterly silent the room was otherwise. Not even the shuffle of restless feet or an endless sea of rustling cloth and armor as she had expected.

Everyone held perfectly still, as if movement could break some spell.

Sarah thought maybe that was the case as the ship’s engines cut, and it dropped a ramp down that extended to the swept floor.

She wanted to get a better look. Badly. All she’d have to do was turn her head a little and look sideways, and she could see more than just the farthest edge of the triangular, white and black transport.

She kept her eyes forward with the others as whoever was on stepped down the ramp in precisely timed footsteps that echoed.

Sarah could count on one hand the number of times she had felt her own abilities warn her of danger she could otherwise not feasibly perceive or understand. It was as though something cold and hot and sharp all at the same time wrapped around her body and closed in, then slowly squeezed like she was held in a giant fist.

_ ‘I am no one worth notice, entirely forgettable,’ _ she thought as she clung to the thread of concentration that kept her going unremarked on. Or, maybe everyone was just so focused on their own paralyzed decorum to bother paying close attention to who stood next to them. Whichever it was, she wasn’t willing to take chances.

It felt like agonizing years as the visitor was joined by other footsteps, and soon there was a small group of people walking down the narrow lane created between the assembled ranks.

Finally, she could see them, and Sarah wasn’t able to stop herself from a quick peek as their movement caught her eye. She caught a glimpse of a tall man of rich, deep brown skin, his dark hair close to the scalp, and dressed in all black with a flowing cape. It whisked behind each crisp step, lined on the inside in a striking red, and he was flanked by six stormtroopers in black armor.

She quickly looked forward again, and resisted the urge to swallow. She saluted with the group, delayed in her reaction by a mere breath of space, heels clicked together.

She was supposed to be here. She had to play the part. Soon enough, this pomp and ceremony would be over, and the moment they were sent away to break ranks, she would cut to the terminal, drop the bug, and she and Sabine could leave.

The stranger and his escort stopped in front of her platoon. Column. Group. Whatever it was they called the gathered ranks of medical personnel.

“Medical division, report with me to the laboratory. The rest of you are dismissed,” he announced without looking away from them. His authoritative voice was well enunciated, and rang out clear and sharp in the otherwise silent room.

_ ‘Uh oh,’ _ Sarah thought, and remained standing at attention as the rest of the room burst into a flurry of activity, soldiers and staff filing past to go their separate ways like some great hornet’s nest had been disturbed.

She thought her arm was going to fall off by the time the man finally turned away and they were able to drop their salute, and she was relieved to find they did not have to follow him in formation. The men and women around her all mingled together and walked as they pleased, though she noticed that the few decorated officers who held higher ranks led the group, and had a bit more decorum.

She trailed somewhere at the back middle of the group, made up of at least some forty, maybe fifty people, and avoided the urge to fall completely to the back.

Stragglers were far more noticeable as out-of-place.

And still, her instincts screamed at her.

Sarah walked on, and didn’t dare give into the urge to glare at the terminal as she came within arm’s reach of it, and then it was behind her and gone.

~*~

It took Sabine longer than she’d have liked to figure out where Sarah had gotten off to - and that was to say, she still didn’t. She knew only that Moff Gideon had collected the medical division and brought them with him to wherever it was they worked. She had no idea if it was in this building or in another one, and there was no good way to ask anyone for directions without blowing her own cover.

The only good thing to come of this hitch to their plan was the fact she had found a terminal - it was almost stupidly easy to insert the data stick, and wait the few minutes it took for the installed code to work its magic. No one questioned her, and no one even so much as glanced her way. Most folks were focused on getting back to their work, or just out of the hangar bay the Imperial Shuttle was docked in. She sympathized with that sentiment.

The terminal beeped at her, and she withdrew the silver device she’d plugged into it then pocketed it.

With their mission objective accomplished, Sabine felt cheated.

She should be feeling satisfaction, or even delight, because their plan had worked and now they had what they needed for the larger operation to proceed. Or, they would soon.

Except now they had to get  _ out _ \- and she had no idea where her partner had gone, how long she’d be gone, or if Sarah’s identity would be compromised.

She walked outside and found a spot behind a pile of crates and barrels of stinking refuse, no doubt awaiting pick-up later in the day, a sure-fire retardant to anyone who otherwise might intrude on her hiding space.

She palmed her comm link and thought carefully before she clicked it on.

“Afera. Request to switch to an encrypted channel,” she asked. She didn’t want to risk provoking Din Djarin into abandoning his post to come after his clanmate, or for him to aim at some foolhardy attempt of revenge on the one who was a direct threat to the Foundling in his care.

“Granted. Hold.” Static on the line, and then her comm-link’s indicator light blinked from green to orange. “What’s wrong?” he asked, low and gruff.

“Mission objective complete, but we’ve got a problem; Moff Gideon is here. He’s collected the medical staff and brought them off somewhere - Sarah and I got split up.”

Afera was quiet for far too long before he answered.

“ETA?” he questioned.

“No clue. Do you or Dakara have eyes on their group? Same uniform as Sarah’s, at least forty strong. Black stormtroopers with them.” She was glad she’d been able to see them from across the lane where she stood with the other technicians.

The line went silent, and Sabine leaned against a metal crate, feeling worn and ragged even though she hadn’t actually  _ done _ anything physically taxing yet.

“We’ve got eyes,” he reported, and she let out a breath of relief. “Regroup.”

“No, I need to go and--”

_ “Regroup,” _ Afera repeated in a low growl, and the line went dead.

Sabine swore, then pocketed the communications device and struck out for the rendezvous point. There wasn’t anything she could do if Afera held back information from her.

The irony wasn’t lost on her.

~*~

“What’s going on?” Din asked shortly. Sabine’s unusual request could only mean something had gone wrong.

Dakara ignored him, and he gathered that to mean she was privy to the conversation he’d been cut out of.

“I’ve got eyes,” she reported, and he knew she wasn’t addressing him as she adjusted a knob on her scope and shifted her weight. “Heading towards Warehouse two-eleven, east side.”

He adjusted his grip on the rifle in his hands, and took a step forward.

“Hold position Din,” Dakara snapped without looking up.

“What aren’t you wanting me to know?” he demanded.

“Do your job and I’ll do mine,” the sniper quipped.

Din Djarin strongly considered putting the end of his weapon to the exposed back of her neck to coax more information out of her.

Instead, he brought his own comm-link up to his helmet and thumbed it on.

“Soren, what’s going on?” Din figured if anyone had the guts to answer his demand, it’d be him.

“Your guess is as good as mine. We’re holding position. Hasn’t turned into a shit-show yet.”

“Cut the noise,” Afera barked, his voice distant and muffled as it came through Soren’s radio.

“She’ll be fine,” Dakara soothed without looking his way, a small concession.

It wasn’t enough.

And if it’d been meant to reassure him, it had the opposite effect. She’d effectively confirmed his worry.

~*~

Sarah was in trouble.

More than in trouble, she was in horrifically  _ deep _ trouble, with an emphasis on the horrific. She was pretty sure no glamour in the world could hide the way her face paled at the sight of twisted, mutated bodies that floated in great tubes of bacta chambers as she was led into a secured facility behind thick blast doors. They lined the walls of long corridors in multitudes.

They had passed through no less than four security checkpoints, the last of which led them through a small tie-fighter hanger that had the feeling of elitism in it’s black-garbed pilots and pristine facilities. The stranger had left behind a pair of his black-garbed troopers at each door, until it was just him who led them along.

Their group entered unchallenged with the whoever-he-was obviously having a ridiculous level of security clearance. No one spoke to him unless he addressed them first, and he was clearly the sort of person who operated on a point-A-to-point-B mindset.

Sarah wasn’t the only one with a pale face and discomfort shining bright in their eyes, and somehow, that made her feel a kind of unwanted connection to the individuals she masqueraded as one of.

They were just as human as she was, and she had a feeling several of them didn’t want to be here any more than she did. Fear and unease choked the air around her, oppressive and absolute.

They left the narrow corridor of storage tanks and entered a wide, circular room with three other hallways that extended down to closed doors. In the very center was a large, central control panel, broken by two gaps to allow access into its operating ring. It boasted three officers who sat tending to whatever it was they did while on duty. The black-cloaked stranger stopped in front of them as all three stood and saluted.

“Open sector three,” he ordered simply. The closest officer nodded and turned away to comply.

And then they were off again, taking the left-hand corridor. There were more bacta tanks in here, and more of the distorted, humanoid figures. She tore her gaze away from them with a short gasp as a bloated eyeball turned to look at her.

Sarah felt halfway to hysteria with the way the energy around her prickled and stabbed at her. Everything about this place screamed with a deep perversion of the natural order so strongly that it was beginning to give her an actual headache.

They came to a halt at the end of the room in front of a five-layered blast door halfway through its sequence of opening, each slab of metal several inches thick as it slowly peeled away in layers.

The man stepped into the room the moment the gap was wide enough to allow entry, and Sarah followed suit with the others.

She tried not to flinch at the sound of the doors hissing shut behind them, and copied the staff as they arranged themselves in a semi-circle around the room in two lines, each starting at the edge of the doorway. She stood on the left wing, near the end of the row closest to the entrance.

The room they were in was pure white, and brightly lit to the point that it created a blinding effect that seemed impractical.

There was not a speck of dust to be had anywhere in the room except what they’d tracked in on their own uniforms and boots, and there was a sterile quality to the air she found hard to breathe.

In the very center, an operating table rested. It was empty and foreboding, with it’s open shackles ready to restrain whoever was unlucky enough to be put on it.

Sarah really hoped she wasn’t going to find out who was, but she had a guess. Sabine had mentioned the Empire was importing captives as slaves to the warehouse complex, and now she thought she knew why.

Experimentation.

For what purpose, she had no clue.

“I am to understand that some of you,” the stranger began as he paced a deliberate, counter-clockwise circle around the room. There was ruthless power and a commanding grace in his every step, even though he seemed to be aiming for a ‘casual’ approach. His voice had taken on an unnervingly conversational tone. “Are new to this complex. You may have heard of me - “ he began, then abruptly pivoted on a heel at the far end of the room before another set of closed doors, as his cape swept dramatically through the air. “I am Moff Gideon,” he announced, and then he whipped a hand up in front of him.

Sarah barely had time to register the fact he was holding a blaster pistol - when had he drawn it? - before the woman standing to her immediate left let out a cry and dropped dead, and two others immediately followed suit on the other side of the room as he shot them each in the stomach. The third victim lay curled in fetal position, still alive, before Gideon finished them off with another plasma blast.

Sarah twitched as everyone in the room held otherwise perfectly still, faces pale, knuckles white where they clasped their hands behind their backs.

“I do not tolerate failure,” the Moff declared severely, and walked the row on the far side of the room. He stopped to look each individual in the face, his own expression one of a calm, disinterested reserve as if he were examining nothing more than construction plans or uninspiring art in a museum. “Someone,” he began, and moved to the next medical officer, a tall, young looking man with blond hair and ruddy cheeks, “Has let information slip to the New Republic. This someone,” he continued, and took another step. He stopped in front of the highest ranking officer, an older woman with her hair in a tight bun and a stripe of gray hair, then put his blaster to the underside of her flabby jaw. “Is in this room. And I will shoot every one of you if I must, until the culprit reveals themselves.”

He pulled the trigger, and the woman dropped dead.

No one moved.

He took another step, and tilted his head. As he came to a stop in front of the next terrorized staff member, the man let out a half-choked sob.

He looked to be far younger than Sarah was, and had been one of those to show open horror on their way into the facilities. He was barely an adult.

“No one?” the Moff questioned, and lifted his gun to press it to the young man’s jaw, black barrel biting into soft, tender skin. The medic let out another muffled sob, eyes clenched shut as he shook like a leaf in the wind. Ugly tears rolled down pale cheeks despite his best efforts, and Sarah couldn’t take it anymore.

“I did it,” she announced loudly, the words ripped from her throat before she even registered what was said, and Gideon’s sharp gaze swung to her as he slowly eased his pistol back.

It was like being pinned by a physical force with the intensity of his fixated stare, his dark eyes unblinking as he prowled towards her. She saw someone to the right do a startled double-take at her that went unmarked by the Moff, and Sarah  _ knew. _

She wasn’t the only traitor in the room.

At least something good was going to come of this, if the leak lived to continue spoiling his plans.

He stopped in front of her, and Sarah held her ground as the barrel of his blaster was forced under her chin, and he shoved her head up at a painful angle. The metal was blisteringly hot from recent use, and burned into her skin.

Moff Gideon was much taller than her, with an aged face marred by deep frown lines that gave an extra edge of severity to his expression. They drew taut as he examined her like a bug under the scope.

And still, Sarah didn’t move, frozen in place as if he could command the Force and used it to hold her there, yet she knew the only one keeping her imobile was herself.

“Interesting,” he remarked, then reached up to remove her hat. It revealed her short, wispy haircut, and he examined her features as if looking for something. “You don’t belong here.”

Sarah swallowed thickly, and held his gaze through watering eyes.

“What’s your name?” he asked her, then dug the barrel into her neck until she was certain it would leave a bruise to go with the burn. She could feel his ravenous curiosity as it practically clawed at her skin, a terrifying clue as to the intensity of his single-minded regard.

It also gave her an idea. Shaking off his focus would be impossible, but there were other ways to work with his alarming fixation.

She took a deep breath, then laced every ounce of power she could put into a single command, and imagined that it fed his curiosity, fed his need to know more, the craving desire to decipher her - if he obeyed, he would learn something secret, something indisputably unique. And because it was the truth, it held great power.

“Let us leave the room,” she ordered, the edges of her vision dark as she hurled the suggestion onto his mind with brutal force that rocked through her own body, and made her hands and knees shake from exertion.

Others in the space darted panicked looks at her, and several began to break formation as their fear and the suggestion of a conflict overrode their terrorized decorum.

Moff Gideon recoiled back from her as if she’d physically struck him, his face twisted into a gruesome mix of wrath and confusion, then conflict as he struggled against her command. The blaster pistol was still aimed at her head, his finger on the trigger, but it no longer dug into her skin.

“You want to know more,” she coaxed, and desperately pressed her advantage as she stepped towards him. Power thrummed against her skin, almost addictive in the way it coursed through her in palpable waves. With it she could command his mind, bend his will to hers - force him to obey. “I can tell you everything you’ve ever desired to know. You crave knowledge, to understand. I can give you that. I know  _ powerful _ secrets.”

Someone hit the door controls, and the blast shields began to hiss open behind her as Moff Gideon took another step back. The blaster shook in his grip, and she listened to the sounds of people gathering behind them, crowding the exit as it took much too long to open.

“Who are you?” he whispered, desperate with an insatiable need, and she saw her hooks dig in as his gaze roamed over her with a predator’s obsessive hunger.

Sarah reached up and wrapped her hand around the cooling barrel of his gun. Her fingers shook as she moved it to aim up and away from her face, away from those behind her.

She had to give him something, or the hold she had on him would slip.

The doors were still opening; she needed just a little more time.

“My name is Sarah, Sarah of Clan  _ Slaat’ulik,” _ she offered, and immediately he lurched for her, dark eyes bright with the nearly unhinged, obsessive drive that she’d encouraged. His hand clamped on her right shoulder and she sucked in a breath, forced to put a foot back to stop herself from being toppled over. What she’d given him wasn’t enough. He needed more, more information, more secrets, more power over her - knowledge could provide that.

She could feel her hold on him slipping in equal counterbalance to the increasing strength of his grip, as his fingers dug with bruising force into her bicep.

She stoked his desire for knowledge, and offered him something that she hoped would be able to hold his attention, keep his regard on her. She imagined that he did not want her dead - he needed her alive, if he wanted to know more secrets. He needed only focus on her, and forget about the other people in the room. They were unimportant, inconsequential. She was the prize he sought.

“I have mentored under Jedi Master Yoda,” she revealed, a vast exaggeration of the truth.

“You are a Jedi?” he breathed, his hot breath far too close to her face, and something in his eyes seemed to snap. All at once she felt the rising cascade of an already powerful obsession screech against her mind into a fevered pitch. Terrifying and vast, it threatened to drown her as she had drowned him.

“I am not a Jedi - Not yet,” she answered in a rush, heart rate accelerated, breaths shallow. “I walk the middle path, as told in prophecy.” Her head felt like it was spinning.

“Then you can help me bring order,” Gideon breathed, madness in his eyes. “Bring back the balance that was lost. Join me,” he coaxed. “Help me hunt down the Sith, and create a new world order. There can be  _ peace _ again.”

The passion in his voice was terrifying.

Sarah heard the burst of footsteps pounding down the hall as the medical crew took flight, and she shifted her weight and expression to let him believe she was seriously considering his offer.

She had exactly one shot at this if she was going to make it out alive, herself.

Instead of answering him, Sarah acted; she was so close to him, she was able to reach up and snake her free hand behind his head, then immediately used her hold to haul him towards her as his eyes widened in surprise. At the same time she ducked, jumped into the movement, and smashed her forehead into his face as hard as she could. Gideon fell back with a loud cry as blood spurted from his broken nose. She tried to yank the blaster from his grip as he fell, but he took it with him and her chance at a more permanent retaliation was lost.

Din Djarin and Marrek may have been training her, but she had no illusions about trying to take on someone more than twice her body weight, bare hands versus a blaster. And said someone looked  _ furious. _

And then she was running as she fumbled a hand in her pocket for her comm link, while blaster shots ripped through the air by her legs.

_ “CAPTURE HER ALIVE!” _ the Moff bellowed just as Sarah skidded into the main control room where the officers stood, pale and alarmed. One of them was watching the video feed of the room they’d been in, hand to his mouth, and turned to look at her with wide eyes.

For a split second, no one moved, and then one of them raised a shaking gun at her and she bolted. A shot grazed her shoulder as she vanished down the hall they’d come from, and then the doors ahead of her began to close.

Passionately appreciating her improved stamina thanks to the harsh training, Sarah’s boots pounded the floor as she put her all into that single, mad dash.

A gap of twelve feet swiftly became ten, then six, then a mere three feet across.

She hurled herself forward and jumped through the shrinking center hole in the layered door, and landed in a roll on the metal floor outside. The door slammed shut behind her with a dull, heavy thud, then began to grind its gears as it was immediately cued to reopen. Alarms sounded, loud and blaring.

She still had four more gates to get through in this maze of a building. Instead of taking the predictable path, she drew the knife from her boot, her only weapon, and darted into the nearest corridor and away from the armed guards she knew waited for her at the nearest exit. She had  _ no _ desire to meet Gideon’s spooky, black-armored escorts.

As she turned the corner with the comm-link raised to her mouth to radio for backup, she met a pair of storm troopers who had no doubt been running to answer the call to arms. They didn’t immediately recognize her as the threat.

Sarah didn’t stop to think about it as she smacked the closest one’s gun aside with her fisted hand and buried the knife in his neck with the other. She lost her grip on it as the man fell back with a gurgled scream. The second soldier whirled to shoot at her, badly startled, and Sarah let go of the comm-link to grab his gun, then brought a knee up into his codpiece. Her knee smarted, and it didn’t knock her opponent back as much as she’d hoped, but it did unbalance him just enough she was able to rip the heavy rifle from his gloved fingers. She smashed the pommel into his face and heard the visor crack.

He fell hard and threw his hands up in surrender, cowering, and Sarah hesitated to pull the trigger.

The soldier lurched forward and grabbed her legs, and they tussled on the floor as he knocked the gun away. She flipped him off of her, grabbed the knife from the body they were next to, and he became its next victim.

She sat up panting and looked down at the two of them, then sheathed her knife and grabbed one of the rifles as she scrambled to her feet. He’d carried a better weapon than the standard soldiers did, probably because they were stationed in a higher security facility.

Whatever the reason, she was grateful to have it. She tried not to think about the fact she’d be facing more of them aimed  _ at _ her soon enough.

She found her comm-link on the floor, then groaned under her breath as she heard the pounding of many, many boots in the halls behind her. She shoved the commlink in her mouth then unhitched her uniform’s belt with one hand, and let it drop with a clanging  _ thunk _ to relieve herself of the excessive weight.

Sarah booked it.

~*~

“We’ve got runners,” Luek announced from his position behind a boulder on the inner ridge.

Sabine jumped to her feet from where she sat beside Afera, stewing over a lack of knowledge.

“Ready the ship,” Afera barked with a finger to his helmet. To them he commanded, “Hold positions. We’ve not yet been compromised - Luek, do you have eyes on Sarah?”

“No,” he answered, as he adjusted the wheel on his vambrace Sabine knew controlled the video feed of his helmet's built-in scope. “The Imps are running scared from  _ something. _ They’re scattering into the complex.”

“I bet it’s our terrifying rookie,” Kicker said, a grin audible in his voice.

“Looks like they’re securing the building,” Luek added.

Sabine rolled her shoulders, then turned to address Afera.

“We need to go and--”

The side of Warehouse two-eleven exploded outwards in a whorling inferno of scattered debris and smoke.

_ “What?” _ Afera barked, and Sabine looked back from the destruction to see him with a finger to his communication’s button again. She snatched up her own comm-link and unmuted it to listen in as adrenaline and worry spiked.

_ “--ly a tie fighter?” _ Sarah demanded, her voice pitched several octaves too high. Blaster fire could be heard over the brief spurt of live feed as she spoke.

“Sweet mercy,” Kicker whistled in appreciation as seconds later, a black-winged tie-fighter shot through the opening in the building’s walls, trailing smoke and debris as it half-skated over the ground. Quarren and Imperials alike ran to get out of the way, and Sabine saw entire groups get mowed over before the ship angled sharply up, then shot into the sky in a dizzying spiral.

“Is our position compromised?” Afera demanded on the encrypted channel.

_ “No, just me,” _ Sarah answered.  _ “Oh sh--” _ her voice cut off as the line went dead, and Sabine saw the ship jerk and stutter mid-air before it took off at a sharp right.

“Fall back, double-time,” Afera ordered them, then ran for the pass.

~*~

Din Djarin didn’t need a scope to see the explosion and its billowing plume of smoke, and he turned for the ship even as Dakara demanded to know what was happening on the private channel.

He heard her follow after as he stormed through the Razor Crest’s open door then made for the cockpit, and the woman joined him just as he heard the soft  _ beep _ of his comm-link as those who had been on a different line rejoined the group communications.

_ “--eep flying along the shoreline,” _ came Afera’s sharp command.  _ “Don’t compromise our position, we’re en route to the rendezvous point. You’re not being followed yet.” _

_ “Correction - Two fighters launched. You’ve got company inbound, take evasive action,” _ Luek’s voice intoned.

_ “I don’t even know what that means except to fly like a deranged maniac!” _ Sarah cried.  _ “How do I even shoot this thing? The triggers don’t work!” _

_ “Fly it like you stole it,” _ Luek answered.

_ “I DID steal it, smartass. Real helpful, thanks.” _

Din Djarin had to wait to join the conversation until he had the Razor Crest up in the air, then let go of the controls and shoved himself out of the pilot’s set.

“Take over,” he barked at Dakara, who dropped into place and seamlessly took up control, and brought the ship out of the beginning of a sideways slide. He snatched up his comm-link and growled, “Channel’s mine. Sarah, what are you in?” His heart beat rapidly against his ribcage, and he felt fire in his blood as the rage and worry poured over him.

_ “Tie-fighter. Please tell me you know how to fly one of these things,” _ she begged.

He knew enough.

“Have you engaged the weapon’s system?”

_ “No.” _

“Should be a clear case over a red button, on the joystick or on the right-hand control panel.”

_ “Three more,” _ Luek intoned.

Din Djarin heard the comm-link’s case crack in his fist, and forcibly relaxed his grip.

_ “Got it. This thing is so hard to--” _ her voice cut off as a loud whining screech sounded on the line, and he took dark satisfaction in knowing it would be  _ directly _ in Afera’s cursed eardrums with his built-in headset.

“I’ve got eyes,” Dakara announced. Din Djarin reached out to steady himself on the back of an empty seat as the ship rocked beneath his feet. In the distance he could see a small swarm of tie-fighters which chased after one that trailed a thin line of smoke. The most recent two lagged behind the others.

At least they would be able to tell her apart from them.

“Double back and get behind them,” Din ordered Sarah. “Trigger to shoot, dial knob to adjust for range and targeting. Just like the Razor Crest,” he added.

She didn’t answer him, but he saw the ship flip up into the air in a dizzying spiral before it jerked and shot back. Three of the ships zoomed past and under her. The final two followed her inexperienced roll, and winged around to flank her even as her ship opened fire. He wasn’t sure if it was talent or dumb luck, but she caught one of the leading ships she’d gotten behind on a wing, and sent it spiralling out of the sky into an explosive crash landing.

“Might want to take a seat,” Dakara suggested, and Din belatedly did so. He wanted to be in the pilot’s chair for this, but he couldn’t radio Sarah and fly the ship one-handed. It was too late for a switch, anyways.

_ “Three more launched,” _ Luek announced, and then the Razor Crest opened fire as Dakara took them into a sliding curve that winged them up and above the original cluster as Sarah’s ship whipped past them with two still flanking her.

One of the pair exploded as the heavy repeating cannons struck home.

_ “Two on your tail, Din,” _ Luek announced.

The ship spun and rolled three times before Dakara whipped them up and around, and another tie-fighter exploded as she gunned them down. The ship jerked and stuttered as enemy fire caught them across the hull.

_ “Moff Gideon has some kind of freaky lab down there,” _ Sarah blurted breathlessly, her staticy words tumbling together as she rushed to speak. Din didn’t like the desperation in her voice.  _ “Someone leaked information to the New Republic, and I think the leak’s still alive. He was trying to oust them when I mucked things up.” _

“Tell us about it later - Focus on the fight,” he ordered.

_ “No, you need to know this now, just in case,”  _ she replied. Din clenched his teeth together until his jaw ached.  _ “There were disfigured bodies preserved in bacta - humanoid. Dozens of them. Some kind of operating room. Whatever experiments are going on, it’s not good. He knows I’m force-sensitive, and he’s got some obsession over Jedi. Asked me to help him hunt down Sith. He ordered them to catch me alive. You’d be proud of the broken nose I gave him,” _ she added, her strained voice touched with a glimpse of humor.

He didn’t confirm it, but he was. His mind turned towards what else she’d said - it was possible they had changed their mind on bringing Sarah in alive, but he had a feeling her extended survival in this aerial chase was a nod to that command. They had yet to open fire on her ship.

He wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or more alarmed.

_ “Checkpoint two reached,” _ Afera announced, right as Dakara gunned down another tie-fighter.

_ “Uh, I can’t turn,” _ Sarah announced.

“What?” Din barked, panic spiked anew.

_ “I can’t turn. It’s only letting me go up or d--” _

He heard the metallic clink of her Comm-link as it dropped and hit the floor. Stuck on live feed, it tumbled around in her cockpit as her ship darted up and down in the air in a wavy zig-zag. It fell silent a few moments later, and the obnoxious sound cut off.

Dakara brought the Razor Crest in to follow after her and the remaining tie-fighters. He knew at least one was on their own tail, bolts of vivid green shooting through the air around them as Dakara swerved and rolled to remain a difficult target.

Din raised his voice in the hopes Sarah would be able to hear him off her loose radio. 

“Disengage the yolk; you’ve locked the steering.”

_ “Talk Basic,” _ Sarah retorted a minute later, her voice badly muffled.

“Foot pedals or joystick control only?” he demanded, impatient.

She answered, but he couldn’t hear what was said over the shrill sound of mic feedback.

“Keep on her tail, I’m going out,” Din ordered, and ignored Dakara’s startled double-take as her helmet whipped around to look at him before she returned to her task.

He hopped over the ladder well, shut the blast doors, then hit the controls to open up the top hatch of his ship. The comm-link he shoved into the neck of his shirt collar so he would be able to hear any communications, even if he couldn’t answer.

He was tired of standing on the sidelines.

~*~

From the roof of Warehouse two-eleven, Moff Gideon watched the aerial chase take place. He held a cloth soaked in Bacta to his bloodied face, and felt the anger boil in his blood at the sight of a familiar ship joining the fray. Din Djarin’s infamous Razor Crest had come from the Eastern ridge, and so he had to assume the young woman was connected to him in some way.

What he didn’t know was if there were more intruders lurking nearby. All his troops had been ordered to scour the facilities and round up the medical officers who had defected, and he had half a mind to shoot every last one of them out of spite.

It would take time to go through the video surveillance and determine how long the young woman had been stationed as a spy, and in the meantime, he hoped to have her brought in for thorough questioning and a medical examination.

Whether the fighters succeeded or not, he had the beginning intel on the young woman. An image of her face would no doubt be provided to serve as a hook for searching down more information on her identity, and he would pull the Mandalorian records of clan listings collected from the Purge.  _ Slaat’ulik _ was not familiar to him, and while it was possible she hailed from another culture, the presumed presence of Din Djarin suggested otherwise.

He smiled darkly as one of the tie-fighters chasing the stolen, vertically zig-zagging ship, deployed a grappling line and hooked onto its chassis. It was the first step to bringing her down alive.

The smile slipped as the roped Tie-Fighter suddenly shot straight up into the air, a risky maneuver that ripped off a portion of the main body’s mechanics, but it succeeded in whipping the Imperial pilot into an out-of-control roll through the air.

As the razor crest finished the fool off, he counted only three of his own ships remaining.

He didn’t turn at the sound of approaching footsteps, but when an officer addressed him without preamble, he drew his blaster and shot the man in the chest before he could finish speaking.

As the body hit the rooftop, he stared dispassionately at it and wished the act had made him feel  _ something. _ Satisfaction, perhaps, or at least it could have taken the edge off the boiling, impotent anger that threatened to consume him from within.

His gaze drifted back up to the sky, and his mood darkened.

At least he could still feel  _ hate. _

~*~

“WHAT ARE YOU  _ DOING?!” _ Sarah shrieked, first alarmed by the loud  _ thunk _ of another grappling line as it connected to her ship, and then by a much heavier thud of something else colliding with it. When the improbable view of Din Djarin’s shiny Beskar helmet came into view above her cockpit window, she had nearly flipped the ship up to throw him off on reflex.

He didn’t answer her, not that she probably could have heard him anyways. The cockpit was blaring alarms at her and informing her about critical malfunctions. A light haze of smoke made it just that much harder to breathe in the confined space. Above, she saw her partner shift his weight to secure a better hold, and Sarah focused on flying far more smoothly and level than an aerial combat situation dictated she needed to.

Behind her the Razor Crest was busy keeping the remaining three fighters occupied, but it wouldn’t be long before one broke away to come after her again.

“YOU ARE INSANE,” Sarah bellowed at him, and shook the joystick controls that suddenly locked into place and kept them at a steady, descending angle towards the ground. She stomped her feet on the foot-rudders to no avail, and swore loudly. Din Djarin’s badly muffled voice suddenly filled the confined space from the comm-link on the floor by her feet. She’d given up on trying to keep a hold on the damn thing.

_ “Do exactly as I tell you. Reduce speed by half, then hit the two yellow switches to the left of the thrust. They’ll light up. Remove your harness.” _

Sarah didn’t dare argue, and blindly trusted his instructions as she located the requested controls with one hand, the other busy unbuckling her straps. She did  _ not _ like where this was going.

_ “Good. When I tell you to, and not until then, disengage the safety lock - oval green button above the fuel display - then eject the cockpit window. It’s labeled,”  _ he added. She heard metal clink and clang, and looked up to find him vanished from sight.

“I am going to kill you myself when this is over,” Sarah hissed, and found the needed buttons.

_ “Do it now.” _

She followed his instructions, and as soon as she flipped the clear cover over a gray button marked  _ ‘EJECT’ _ and depressed it, Sarah sucked in a gasping breath as the cockpit window shot up with a hiss and was ripped away. Wind rushed her face, cold and biting, and for several terrifying moments, she couldn’t breathe against the force of it.

Then there was another body in the tiny space as Din jumped down, one fist still wrapped around the line of his shortened grappling line as he reached for her with his other.

“Time to go,” he said simply.

Sarah struggled up out of the seat and wrapped her arms around his neck. The smoking ship bucked and rocked beneath them, and only his hold on the cable and her hasty boot to the frame of the tie-fighter’s cockpit kept them from falling over.

And then Sarah was holding down a scream in her throat as they rocketed up into the sky, nothing between her and the ground hundreds of feet below them except the arms around her.

For several seconds they hung suspended in terrifying nothingness, and then his jetpack cut out, and they were falling, falling -  _ thunk. _

Sarah wheezed as they crashed onto a hard, metal surface and rolled apart, tumbling. Her panic over a deadly free-fall was quickly assuaged as she recognized she and Din were now inside the Razor Crest, flipped sideways with the small doorway he’d dropped them through beginning to close. She lay on the storage cabinets with a hinge underneath the small of her back, and she was pretty sure she was going to be more bruise than human by the time this day was over. For the moment she simply lay there, numb and rather shocked to still be in one piece.

“You two idiots both alive?” Dakara shouted at them from the upper level. Sarah didn’t even try to answer.

“Yeah. Nice timing,” Din complimented, and sat up stiffly. “Are you alright?” he asked as he picked himself up off the wall. Sarah opened her mouth to answer, and instead let out a grunt as the ship slowly rotated to be level. She fell forward and caught herself on hands and knees, and immediately cried out as her right arm buckled. Sharp pain lanced through her body, overwhelming and absolute.

Maybe not quite in one piece.

“No, but I will be,” Sarah gasped, tears stinging her eyes. She barely registered that she’d curled up on the floor. “I think my arm’s broken,”

_ “Dank farrik,” _ Din swore as he knelt beside her. “Let me see.”

“Hey, lovebirds, get up here and strap yourself in. I’ve still got two fighters on my tail,” Dakara shouted.

Sarah grit her teeth and kept her arm cradled protectively to her chest as her partner helped her stand.

Getting up the ladderwell was an interesting experience of one-handed hops and hissed, hitching breaths of pain as Din pushed her up and steadied her from below.

“Keep it steady, we’ll set the bone as soon as we’re able,” Din promised as he hurriedly strapped her into the seat harness, mindful of her broken arm. Sarah clenched her jaw as he pulled the straps tight, and effectively locked it into place against her chest.

_ “Osik, _ what broke?” Dakara questioned.

“Arm,” Sarah hissed.

“Everyone cozy?” the sniper asked a moment later, and at Din’s affirmative brought the ship into a hair-raising roll that still felt loads better than the dizzying spins and dips Sarah had been exposed to while on the zippy-zoomy Tie-Fighter. “Shields are down,” Dakara reported as one of the two ships raked them over the top, and Sarah grinned darkly as the other exploded, caught by the Razor Crest’s cannons.

In another minute, it was over, and they were rocketing out over bare stone.

“Did Sabine make it out safe?” Sarah demanded.

“She dropped the bug and got out. We’re on our way to pick them up now,” Dakara confirmed. “I can’t believe they aren’t opening fire with the ground canons now that their Fighters are downed.”

“They want her alive,” Din Djarin reminded grimly.

“Sucks to be them,” Sarah wheezed, and closed her eyes as she let her head fall back against the headrest.

When Dakara brought the ship down to land, Sarah watched in silence as she and Din switched places. The woman dropped down the ladder to go greet the others, and Sarah counted the seconds off in her head. The pain was one step away from unbearable.

She couldn’t wait to let Soren have a look at her battered body. She knew she probably looked like a bantha’s second stomach pass again.

“You absolute crazy lunatic, that was  _ incredible! _ You gave Moff Gideon a broken nose? I need to hear more about that!” Sabine’s voice broke into the small space, and Sarah opened her eyes in time to see the Mandalorian woman step in front of her with a victorious grin. Sabine threw herself forward to hug her, seat and all, before Sarah could open her mouth to speak. Her vision went white as the breath whooshed out of her lungs. “I can’t believe y-- Are you hurt?” Sabine asked, alarmed.

“Broken arm, hands off,” Din growled savagely, and Sabine hastily jumped back while Sarah screamed in the confines of her head. A small, pitchy warble rose up in her throat that she couldn’t quite hold back.

“Shit, sorry! Way to go. You did great, rookie. Sorry,” she repeated, chagrined.

“Glad we all made it out alive,” Sarah answered faintly.

“Out of the way,” Soren ordered as he climbed up. “Shove off, Sabine.”

“Right, moving it. Sorry, Sarah!” She waved as she left then dropped out of sight, and Sarah heard the distant conversations and congratulations from below as the warriors enjoyed their reunion.

Soren’s helmet looked down at her, and he put a hand on the cockpit wall to steady himself as the ship lifted up into the air and shot off. Sarah knew it was going to be a long flight home - they couldn’t risk going directly to the covert in case they got tailed.

“Ten minutes to make sure no one is tailing us, then I can look at it.,” Soren decided, and took a seat. He unlocked the swivel and turned to face her as he calmly strapped himself in. “Where else are you injured? I see the burn on the shoulder.”

“Let’s just say everything hurts,” Sarah answered.

“No. Be  _ specific.” _

Sarah sighed, clenched her jaw, then forced the words out.

“Burn on the neck. Plasma bolt grazed my shoulder. Think I got cut on the leg from shrapnel, I didn’t exactly stop to look. More than that, I don’t know. Pretty sure I’m one big bruise at this point.”

“How bad’s the burn?”

“I’ll live.” It certainly hurt less than her arm.

“What made it?”

Sarah opened her eyes to look at the back of Din Djarin’s seat. His barely reigned in emotions were smothering in the small room, but she took comfort from the obvious concern… and pride.

“Moff Gideon’s gun. Barrel was hot from shooting his own staff.”

Soren took his helmet off so she could see his face and the raised eyebrows he wore.

“Now  _ that _ sounds like a story.”

“Hey! Save the storytime for when all of us can hear it,” Sabine called from below. “I can only hear every other word.”

“I don’t really want to share it,” Sarah admitted softly. Soren’s expression didn’t change as his single good eye appraised her critically, before he put his helmet back on and shrugged.

“That’s your choice.”

They passed the time in a tense silence for those in the cockpit, until Din Djarin announced they had the clearance to move about freely.

“I’ll grab the med kit, sit tight,” Soren said, and vanished from the room.

“I’m not going to like this, am I?” Sarah asked, grimacing.

“Probably not. Keep your jaw locked so you don’t bite your tongue.”

“...Alright.”

The Mandalorian medic returned far too quickly, carrying a heavy black box with a leather handle. He set the trunk down on the floor, then carefully unstrapped Sarah’s harness straps.

“Are you a screamer?” Soren asked far too casually as he eyed her broken arm. Sarah wasn’t sure if he was serious, or messing with her. Possibly both.

“No?”

“Great. I like my eardrums. This first, then everything else.” He reached out and carefully supported her arm, and Sarah clenched her jaw as she watched. From his vambrace a red light flashed out and scanned the length of her arm, and she was morbidly fascinated to see the scan of her broken bones show up on the small display built into his equipment’s control panel.

The medic tapped the screen and a blue hologram appeared above it in the air, a three-dimensional wire-frame map he enlarged with a reversed pinch of his fingers on the screen, then slid a digit around to rotate the thing to examine it.

“A single clean break, that’s a good thing. It’s shifted, so I’ll have to set it. We can soak it in a Bacta compress and wrap it up, but it’ll take a few hours for the bone to mend, and you’ll be on light duty for a week of recovery time.”

“It takes that long to mend even with Bacta?” Sarah asked, dismayed yet curious, and pleased to have something other than the pain to occupy her thoughts as he gently prodded her arm.

“More or less. Technically, you could be using your arm as early as tomorrow morning - But do you really want to risk weakening the bone for the rest of your life or causing a new fracture? Modern medicine has come far, but it has its limitations.”

“Nope, definitely not.”

She watched as he opened up the med kit with his free hand, then lifted up the top tray and set it aside. Everything was neatly organized and pristinely cared for, and it made Sarah feel a palpable relief that she was being tended by someone who clearly knew what they were doing.

He picked up a small gray device with a clear cap, and flicked it off with his thumb. Sarah grimaced as she saw the tip of a needle.

“Everyone makes that face,” Soren commented, and she snorted softly, and held back a laugh that would no doubt shake her torso and aggravate her injuries. “Hold still. This is a hematoma block with a mild anesthetic; it’ll make sure the fracture point is safe against infection. It’s going to hurt until the painkiller kicks in.”

“I’m gonna be honest, I really wasn’t expecting the luxury of painkillers. I could kiss you,” she joked.

“Better not,” Din dryly commented from the front. Sarah smiled.

“I don’t have a death wish. I’m going to count to three, then inject it,” he said as he put the needle to her arm to line it up - and pulled the trigger the moment it touched her skin.

Sarah jolted in the chair as sharp pain lanced deep through her arm, and sucked in a hissing breath. She could feel the spread of cool liquid as it was distributed, and that combined with the agony made her feel nauseous.

“Liar,” she wheezed.

“Never said I’d count out loud. If you tense up, it hurts worse,” he explained unapologetically as he set the tool aside. “Thirty seconds,” he observed, and tapped a timer on his vambrace. “This is going to hurt. Keep your jaw locked so you don’t bite your tongue off, just in case,” he added, then put a hand to her shoulder to guide her to brace against the coming tug.

Sarah’s vision went black, and she didn’t realize she’d fallen forward in the seat until Soren was pushing her back up, swearing softly.

“Your shoulder is  _ dislocated,” _ he accused.

“No shit,” Sarah wheezed.

“And you didn’t think to  _ tell _ me?” he demanded sharply, and this time shoved her back with a hand to her collarbone. Het immediately about straightening her arm to prep for adjustment, and pushed her sleeve all the way up to the elbow.

“I didn’t know until you grabbed it! My  _ entire body _ feels like a giant played fetch with it.”

_ “Osi’kyr! _ Mandalorians are the  _ worst _ patients. Brace,” he ordered shortly, then grabbed her forearm with both hands, and eyed the hologram still displayed in the air before he tugged and turned his wrist.

Sarah growled against her clenched teeth, eyes squeezed shut against hot, sudden tears.

“Bone’s set. Hold still while I splint it, then we’ll take care of that shoulder.”

She watched as he created a splint from thin, flat, and inflexible strong rods of some kind of black coated metal. He secured four of them to her arm with an adhesiveless tape that stuck to itself as he wrapped it. Next came the bacta compress. Sarah could feel the worst of the remaining pain begin to ebb off as soon as it had been pressed against her skin, and bound snugly around the break point.

Ironically, what hurt the worst was setting her shoulder back into place. There was no anesthetic offered for this, and Sarah was further convinced Mandalorians all had a mandatory sadistic side to them as Soren hummed in approval at her humiliating, pained whimper. She hadn’t realized how much agony she’d been in until her shoulder was back where it belonged, and she felt worlds better already.

“Are you going to murder me if the shirt comes off?” Soren asked dryly as he looked over his shoulder at the silent pilot.

Sarah was amused that she and Din both answered at the same time with a simple “No.”

“Let’s get you out of this then. Is the blood on your face yours?”

“...No. Gideon’s,” she clarified as she let him help her out of the sweaty officer’s tunic and the white undershirt. She still wore her flat chestwrap, and the cool air felt nice on her skin as she sat at the edge of her seat.

“Nice,” Soren complimented. “--The blood, not the girl,” he called back before their audience had a chance to get the wrong idea. “What’d you do, elbow him in the face?”

“Headbutt.”

_ “Mirshmure’cya? _ Ballsy. You’re lucky, this isn’t deep,” he observed as he inspected the burned gash on her shoulder. “Now  _ this _ on the other hand - Ouch. Talking’s going to hurt tomorrow if it swells up - I’ll put bacta on it and take care of that, this should be healed by tonight,” he explained as he gently probed the flesh around the painful bruise and burn on her upper throat, and Sarah worked her jaw.

She had no good reason  _ why _ she wanted to refuse, but it felt like something she needed to do.

“Leave it. Everything else you can tend.”

It was odd to hear him hum a noncommittal reply, muffled by his helmet. She remained silent as he tended the rest of her injuries, and by the end of it, felt almost back to normal. She wasn’t surprised the well prepared medic had a sling to provide her with, and carefully helped settle her arm in it.

“Wear the sling and splint for a week, light duty only. The compress can come off tonight. Want this thing back on or your own clothes?” he asked as he packed his medical kit back up, and gestured carelessly at the discarded Imperial shirts.

“Please tell me I can risk a shower before we land,” Sarah asked as she stood up.

“We’ve got another five hours before we reach the covert, at this speed. Go for it,” Din confirmed.

“I’ll change then.  _ Vor entye _ , Soren,” Sarah said, heartfelt in her thank-you. With the pain of her arm numbed to a dull ache, she definitely figured she owed him one.

_ “Ba’gedet’ye, _ don’t break my good work,” he answered as he latched his kit shut.

Sarah waited until the medic was gone before she walked over and placed a hand on her friend - and lover’s - shoulder.

“Thank you,” she murmured. There was more she wanted to say, but not while they had company.

He took a hand off of the joystick controls just long enough to place his over hers, and nodded shortly.

Sarah smiled, then trooped her way across the short room and collected the discarded shirts as she went.

When she awkwardly hopped her way down one-handed into the main floor, Sabine awaited her with a grin. The others were sitting down where they could find space to, Kicker having opted for laying on the bare floor. He looked asleep, arms under his head, helmet off, and eyes closed.

“Can I steal a proper hug now that you’re all patched up?” Sabine asked.

Sarah laughed quietly and lifted her good arm up for a light, sideways embrace. It gave her the best sort of fuzzies in her chest, because it felt like greeting a true friend. She was certain that after all this, she’d finally earned one in Sabine.

“I’m glad to see you made it out in better shape,” Sarah said as she stepped back and looked the woman up and down. She hadn’t been  _ overly _ worried about her partner making it out alright, as she’d been confident Sabine’s cover hadn’t been blown.

“Easy peasy. I’m not the one who had to get all dramatic on the exit. Show off, much?”

_ “You _ weren’t locked in a room full of crazy,” Sarah retorted as she shooed Luek off her storage crate and punched the code to open it.

“How’d you manage to steal the tie-fighter?” he asked, folding arms over his chest as he openly observed her.

“I tricked the stormtroopers into fighting amongst themselves. Didn’t work on everyone, but it caused enough chaos to create a distraction. I was looking for anywhere I could hide when I found myself in the hangar room.”

“Big boom?” Kicker prompted excitedly as he sat up, wide awake.

“Dumb luck. Gideon’s creepy escorts were armed with detonation charges.”

“...And they just blew it up for you?” Luek questioned. “Nice of them.”

Sarah straightened with her clothes flopped precariously over her good shoulder, and closed the chest.

“No. I blew them up first. They were standing by fuel tanks - I think the mechanics were in the middle of a transfer. How did the trek back go? Any trouble on the way?”

“Surprisingly not. They called their troops back in, idiots weren’t paying attention to the pass.”

“Who exactly is Moff Gideon?” Sarah asked as she flopped her gun harness over her accumulated pile.

_ “Skanah,” _ Afera spat acerbically. “A universally detested wretch amongst Mandalorians and most the galaxy besides. He was an officer in the Imp’s intelligence division, and had a direct hand in the fall of Mandalore. He’s committed countless obscenities even the worst sort of scoundrel wouldn’t dare do. A coward and an Oathbreaker.  _ Skanah,” _ he emphatically repeated.

Sarah clenched her jaw, and fervently wished she’d given him more than just a broken nose. She could still feel the ghost sensation of his gun in her hand, and the way it had  _ almost _ slipped from his grip. She could have killed him then, if only she’d been better skilled. Stronger, more capable.

If she hadn’t doubted herself.

She caught Soren’s eye as the medic inclined his head at her - his helmet rested by his feet where he sat on a crate, and she reached up to touch her face. The blood had long since dried.

“Soren said you got that burn from his gun,” Sabine commented, a bright light in her eyes that Sarah could only describe as predatory glee. She swallowed thickly and nodded.

“Yeah.”

_ “Mandokarla, _ Sarah,” Sabine praised softly, then clapped her on the shoulder over her pile of clothes before she turned away to take a seat. Afera snorted and nodded a solemn agreement, and Sarah felt a strange sense of pride and unease as the others mirrored the sentiment.

Her grasp of the  _ Mando’a _ language was scant. She hesitated, yet no translation was offered, and she somehow didn’t feel right to ask.

She turned away and made for the shower, with a promise to Soren to keep her bandaging on the arm dry.

When she was finished and dried off under the warm air wash, Sarah dressed and returned to the cockpit to join Din Djarin in companionable silence as she slumped in the seat. After all the noise and chaos, it was nice to enjoy the quiet.

It was strange how quickly she had gotten used to her new place in life. She felt whole again, with her uniform and weapons secured back where they were supposed to be, a steady comfort.

In no time at all, she dozed off.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FUN TRIVA, CONTINUED:
> 
> It was totally Numi's idea for Din to appear on Sarah's tie-fighter, though we originally joked that he should be there so he could give Sarah directions on how to fly the damn thing because at first, I planned on her losing her commlink entirely. We also had some crazy ideas like her weapon's targeting system accidentally locking onto the Razor Crest as the nearest flying object instead of the other Tie-Fighters, but that didn't end up making the cut, along with... so many other ideas. So many.
> 
> I also totally planned for her to do a cheeky IMPROMPTU TRUST-TEST because her ship was gonna crash and/or she had no idea how to land the thing to begin with.
> 
> "Din, are you wearing your jetpack?"  
> "Yes, why?"  
> "Catch."  
> >ejects herself out of the ship
> 
> However, as funny as that would have been, Din's -really- not the kind of guy to wait around. He takes the initiative before anyone even knows there's initiative to take. He takes the initiative even when there ISN'T an initiative to take. It just bursts into being in the face of his unstoppable force of will.
> 
> I also totally wanted him to get caught off guard by Sarah flying overhead in a tie-fighter and someone cheekily commenting "Din, on your left" to alert him (too late) about it. Another of Numi's brilliant ideas ;P
> 
> Alas, that line now only exists in this little notes section. BUT HEY, I GOT IT WITH THE STORY. THIS COUNTS, RIGHT?
> 
> On Moff Gideon: Man, I love writing him. He has such a powerful, commanding presence in the show, and his actor is just superb. I hope I did him justice trying to capture that here. Honestly, I didn't even know how Sarah's confrontation with Gideon was going to go when I began this chapter. All I knew was that they were going to meet, and they were going to get to look each other in the eyes.
> 
> He pretty much wrote himself, and so did Sarah. I just sat back and tried to make sure they didn't actually manage to kill each other so I can keep abusing them both in this ridiculously long plotline.
> 
> As for the mind-trick Sarah played on him - that almost didn't make it into the story. I thought *REALLY* hard over if she would be able to force her hand over him. At first, I didn't think mind tricks would work on him at all, and that it should fail point-blank. Numi suggested that they could and had some great reasons why, and that birthed the idea for Sarah to use his ridiculously obsessive nature against him.
> 
> That tooooootally won't have lasting consequences. Definitely a safe plan. Absolutely over and done with.
> 
> ...
> 
> ...
> 
> #lolGetRektSarah
> 
> \---
> 
> Mando'a Translations:
> 
> Mando(s) - Just slang for Mandalorian. Many people refer to a Mandalorian as "Mando" if they don't know their actual name. (And some think it IS their name!)
> 
> Slaat'ulik - "Mudhorn" see Chapter 13's notes for more info.
> 
> Osik - "Shit"
> 
> Osik'kyr! - A strong exclamation of surprise or dismay, in the flavor of cussing :D
> 
> Mirshmure'cya - MY FAVORITE WORD IN THIS ENTIRE CHAPTER. It *literally* translates as "brain-kiss." As you might now guess, it means "headbutt." I am so glad I found an excuse to use it. Bless your heart, Soren.
> 
> Fun trivia to go with that: a headbutt is a -very- dangerous fighting move. So many things can go wrong. You can get cut badly if you hit the person's teeth instead of the soft cartilage of their nose, or get banged up yourself if you whack their forehead, etc. Sarah was quite desperate.... And this was a desperate move. Don't try it at home, kids!
> 
> Vor Entye - A very high expression of gratitude, that literally translates as "I accept a debt." Basically, you're not just saying thank you, but saying "I owe you one" (and meaning it)
> 
> Ba'gedet'ye - "You're welcome"
> 
> Skanah - A *very* detested thing or person.
> 
> Mandokarla - A very high compliment. Forgive me for copy-pasting the direct translation description from the handy-dandy dictionary I frequently pilfer, but honestly, it's great: "having the *right stuff*, showing guts and spirit, the state of being the epitome of Mando virtue." What is the 'right stuff' you ask? "Mandokar" is, which translates with an explanation of: "the *right stuff*, the epitome of Mando virtue - a blend of aggression, tenacity, loyalty and a lust for life"
> 
> Sarah has no idea how high a compliment she got paid.
> 
> Dank Farrik - Not Mando'a, but a general Star Wars expletive. I like to think it's the stand in for "Fucking dammit!"
> 
> Moff - Not a Mando'a word, but if you're like me, you might not have realized that "Moff" is not Gideon's name, but his *rank.* Basically.... the lead leadiest lead of the Empire. Look it up on Wookiepedia if you want more info on it, as they explain it WAY better than I can here.


	16. Family

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oh ho ho... Finally! At last! Our first peek at Grogu's POV comes up in this chapter.
> 
> \---
> 
> For anyone who likes listening to music while reading, some fun trivia for you:
> 
> -any- time I write Sarah and Din doing something cute and intimate together like handholding or cuddling, I throw on the instrumental version of "Iris" by the Goo Goo Dolls.
> 
> The song itself (with lyrics!) is my personal headcannon theme for the ship of Din x Sarah. It's SO GOOD for them. SO. GOOD.
> 
> I can't usually listen to something and write (or talk) at the same time though, so I use instrumental versions when I write stuff.
> 
> Also, Numi found a great theme song for Sarah, and I wrote almost the entirety of the previous chapter while listening to it (And as a rarity, I didn't even need the instrumental variant).
> 
> Her theme is "Catch Me if You Can" by Set it Off.

As the Razor Crest’s engines powered down, Din Djarin sat back in his chair and heaved a long, bone-weary sigh. For a few moments, he simply enjoyed the feeling of being out of immediate harm’s way and in one piece; the tension, the fear, the constant worry he’d had to bite back on to keep a clear head - it all began to ease its heavy weight off his bruised shoulders. Soon, it was replaced with the feelings of accomplishment, pride, and satisfaction. They’d completed their objective, and had made it out alive.

Time would tell if the Imps realized exactly what had transpired, but he felt confident that this operation had been a mixed success regardless - though the knowledge that now  _ both _ has clanmates had a price on their head by Moff Gideon unsettled him, they’d also learned more about what the Empire was up to, and Sarah had proved her worth to the tribe.

He wouldn’t be surprised if the women of the covert considered this her first combat trial. He felt certain the Forgemaster he’d grown up with would.

Din pushed back and swiveled around. He examined Sarah as he quietly unbuckled his harness, and listened idly to the sounds of the others below as they gathered to leave the ship.

He considered for a moment, then slipped past without waking her.

“Where’s Sarah?” Sabine asked as soon as he joined them. Afera was the first off the ship with Luek close behind.

“Sleeping. I have a favor to ask.” Sabine’s expression was surprised, then quickly melted into an easy smile.

“Anything,” she offered, and he appreciated the implied sentiment of her open offer.

“Collect Grogu from lessons and bring him here. I don’t care what Mars says.”

“She’ll understand. I’ll bring your kid back, but only  _ after _ I get out of these stinking Imp rags.” She gave a light punch to his arm, then trotted off.

He wasn’t surprised to find his clanmate still slumped in her chair as he stiffly climbed back into the cockpit. He reached for her, then hesitated.

After a moment of deliberation, Din Djarin carefully tugged the glove off from underneath his right vambrace. It took a few moments of tedious twisting of his wrist and flexing his forearm to get it to slip free, and then it was stuffed away into the strap of his belt. 

Finally, he laid a palm against her face, skin-to-skin, and brushed a thumb over her high cheekbone. She’d cleaned up well, though he could see she had a scabbed cut above her eyebrow.

His lips twitched in the beginning of a smile as she unconsciously leaned into his touch with a soft sigh.

“Sarah.”

She stirred, and he waited patiently until the woman had opened her eyes and blinked them awake, then sat up in her chair.

“Oh. We’re back?” she asked groggily, and stifled a yawn as she fumbled with her harness buckles one-handed.

He nodded once, and wondered how to frame his request. He knew  _ what _ he wanted, but he wasn’t entirely sure how to get it. There had been too many other people on board for them to share a private conversation, and there were too many things left unsaid from recent events.

Beyond his need to know more details over what she’d witnessed, Din Djarin had a very simple, and very strong desire; he just wanted to spend time with his family. He had come so very close to losing her.

It reminded him unpleasantly of Tarre Viszla’s ominous prophecy, and he didn’t want to think about that.

Sarah’s head tilted, then she smiled warmly at him. He wondered what she felt from him, if she could sense the depth of his need. Perhaps he wouldn’t have to ask, after all.

“Should I close my eyes or something?” she teased hopefully, and he swallowed thickly. The thought of a  _ kiss _ hadn’t even crossed his mind.

Now that it had…

“Yes.” A glance out the cockpit confirmed no one would be able to see through the windows this high up off the ground, and he would hear anyone entering the ship. It was safe enough.

~*~

Footsteps sounded on the Razor Crest’s ramp, and Din Djarin left a smiling, breathless Sarah behind as he donned his helmet and dropped down the ladderwell. He didn’t bother to tell her she could open her eyes - she’d figure it out.

“Thank you,” he offered simply as he approached Sabine. He could feel a smile twitch into being as the Foundling she held reached for him with both hands, tiny fingers spread and grasping. “Hey, kid. Grogu,” he amended, as he picked him up and settled him in the crook of his left arm. It occurred to him that he’d never handled Grogu without gloves on, and it was strange and endearing to feel the soft peach fuzz that topped his scalp and ears as he patted the kid’s head. Behind him, he could hear Sarah slowly make her way down the ladder.

“Mars has  _ expressly _ forbidden me from telling you what mischief he got up to while you guys were gone. She wants to tell you herself,” Sabine said as she removed her helmet now that her hands were free, and he frowned as he looked at her.

It needled him unpleasantly, that he was growing so used to seeing the Mandalorians of this covert remove their headcovers. With Sarah’s lips still fresh on his mind, it clashed against the uncertain guilt he felt over his own dangerous skirting of the rules.

He may not have broken his Oath, and he and Sarah had done nothing more scandalous than a few infrequent, stolen kisses over the last few weeks, but he didn’t think his immediate family would be as open-minded to his indulgence.

He pushed the uncomfortable flood of thoughts aside to mull over later, then turned his gaze to Grogu.

“I thought I told you to behave.”

Green ears drooped for a moment, then lifted up, unabashed.

“You didn’t tell him to behave  _ good,” _ Sarah guessed as she stepped up to his side.  _ “Su’cuy, _ Grogu,” she greeted with a smile, and Din Djarin’s heart skipped a beat. She was learning.

“Sooooo… You’re going to join us tonight for  _ Skraan’ikase _ after debriefing _ , _ right?” Sabine asked.

“What’s that?” Sarah questioned, and Din looked her way to answer.

“A celebratory meal. Better grub than the usual field rations and slop.” He could practically taste the remembered heat and spice of his favorite selections on the tip of his tongue, and fervently hoped at least some of them made an appearance.

He might even volunteer in the kitchens himself, just to be sure they did.

“You’re doing a terrible disservice to an absolutely delightful occasion of culinary greatness,” Sabine huffed. “It’s not just better grub - it’s the  _ best _ grub. And a whole lot of it. You’ll love it, Sarah.”

“We’ll be there,” Din Djarin promised, unaccustomed to the eagerness he felt. “When?”

“Usual eating space at sundown, so you might want to grab a snack to tide you over. Me, I’m going on an empty stomach so I can shamelessly stuff my face.”

“When’s debriefing?” Sarah questioned next.

“In a few hours, whenever you’re ready to share what you saw. The others are doing the same thing as you three - spending time with family.”

“What about you?” Sarah questioned gently, and Din Djarin involuntarily grimaced. It was selfish, yet he sincerely hoped she didn’t invite the woman to stay with them.

He didn’t want an audience.

“I’m off to go bug Marrek for a song, and brag about Moff Gideon getting his nose busted in by a tiny scrap. That’s the kind of story people need to hear - We’re probably going to start calling you Nexu,” she teased with a grin.

Din caught the subtle shift of expression on Sarah’s face as his partner seemed to recoil from, rather than be pleased by, the compliment.

“I’d… Rather you didn’t,” she admitted warily.

“What, the name or the bragging?” Sabine wondered.

“The bragging. I failed to kill him, it’s not exactly an accomplishment,” Sarah answered softly as her gaze dropped to the ground, jaw clenched.

“Sarah.” Din reached over to put a hand on her back, and waited until her blue eyes lifted to meet his own as Sabine bit her tongue on a reply. “It is an accomplishment. Few have faced him and lived to tell about it. You drew blood; that’s a warrior’s honor.”

Sabine cleared her throat, sheepish.

“Kicker’s already blabbed to half the covert.”

He felt Sarah’s spine straighten, muscles drawn taut under his bare hand, and Din Djarin leaned over to whisper a soft aside to her.

“I wish I could have seen it. Nice to have payback for the kid.”

Sarah’s eyes darted to him.

“He hurt Grogu?” she demanded as she bristled, and Din felt his lips twitch in a barely suppressed smirk at her immediate change. It was tempered only by the child in question turning his face into the chestplate he was held against, and Din let go of Sarah to gently cover Grogu’s head.

It was good to see the disturbed edge in Sarah’s expression replaced with that fierce fire that clashed so well against the cold, ice-blue of her eyes.

That was more like it.

“He did. Imp called him an asset; he’s the one masterminding their hunt.”

“You’re anything but,” Sarah soothed the distressed child, affection and concern in her voice as she reached for Grogu. Pale knuckles gently brushed against his little shoulder. Din had always known the child to be small and vulnerable despite his strengths, yet it felt so much more prominent with his warm, tiny skull beneath his bare hand. His soft, fuzzy skin was a distant tickle against hard calluses.

“Sick bastards,” Sabine muttered. Din caught the haunted look in her eyes, marked with a burning hatred before she composed herself, and donned her helmet. “Right. Well, come find me at the tavern whenever you’re ready. If I’m not there, I’m probably at Marrek’s  _ vheh’yaim.” _

And finally, blessedly, they were alone. Din wasted no time to seal the ship up as soon as he heard Sabine’s steps transition from the click of metal to the crunch of dirt, and took satisfaction at the small sense of security it afforded. The repairs had long since been completed, and so the interior was sealed off from any drafts.

“Get the blankets out,” he requested softly as he lifted his gaze from Grogu to look at Sarah.

“Huh?”

He nodded at the empty space on the floor, still framed by the magnetically locked-down chests, where her bed usually went. All the loose items had been cleaned up before they’d set off for the infiltration.

He could tell she was bewildered, yet willing to humor him as he watched her type the combination to unlock her footlocker. She lingered for a moment over the narrow box that held her broken lightsaber from the Tuskens, then pulled the folded blankets out one-handed. He set Grogu down on a closed crate and took them from her, then set about laying them out. When he was done he took a seat in the middle, then leaned back against the wall as Sarah watched him with open curiosity.

Little in their relationship had changed since their first kiss; they had been too busy with preparations for the mission, and Sarah spent most her days occupied in lessons as she was passed between various instructors. When he wasn’t running flight drills with Dakara or engaging in tactical debate with Sabine and the others of their small infiltration group, he had spent the time working on whatever labor needed doing around the covert. From repairs on  _ vheh’yaims _ to chopping piles of firewood, or working a dinner shift in the kitchens, he kept himself busy to avoid sitting idle.

With little free-time to spend together, his evenings with Sarah had consisted mostly of quiet, personal conversation over a sleepy Foundling, and a recounting of the day’s events before they all hit the rack.

He was ready to take things a step further. He wanted her close; he wanted to  _ hold _ her.

It didn't take her long to figure out what his intentions were as he divested himself of his breastplate, gloves, and one vambrace. The moment she realized, he watched her face light up with surprise, then delight. Grogu beeped at him, a sound that almost sounded like a word as he waddled excitedly across the top of the chest he stood on, hands reaching.

~*~

Warm, safe, and surrounded by the pleasing aura that surrounded his surrogate parents, Grogu submersed himself in the comfortable peace.

He yawned widely, snugly tucked into his mother’s lap with both her and his father’s arms loosely wrapped around him. The three of them sat together, blankets over their knees, swaddling him in cozy warmth.

In the beginning, it had made him nervous to be picked up by those large, leather-gloved hands. To be caged inside strong arms that could easily prevent his escape as so many before had done. When he learned just how gentle those hands could be, how carefully they handled him, trust had grown in place of fear. Now, he enjoyed the freely given affection he had been so starved of for so very long. Their strength made him feel safe.

He reached out and settled his palm on each of their hands, and quietly marveled at how similar they all were despite an obvious difference in size and color. His mother’s pale fingers were slender and long, with soft skin where they weren’t covered by her fingerless gloves. Father’s hands were much larger, dwarfing everyone’s with thick, muscular digits and heavy calluses.

Each had the Force flowing through them as all things did, and each had done acts of great kindness or terrible violence with the power they possessed.

_ “Ibac’ner,” _ he happily warbled - or tried to. The words he’d been taught were hard to speak; his lipless mouth struggled to form with his tongue around the combination of harsh syllables and softer letters.

Knowing that his parents couldn’t understand him was frustrating at times, but he knew they caught the most important meanings he tried to convey.

“Love you, too, kiddo,” Sarah murmured softly from above him, and he craned his head back to look at her as his heart filled with a giddy, fuzzy warmth. Over her shoulder, his father’s helmet came into view as he looked down at him.

Warm, safe, comfortable. 

Loved.

_ “Ibac’ner,” _ Grogu struggled to repeat, and patted their hands again before he snuggled back down into the blankets, and yawned.

Sleepy and content, he drifted off into pleasant dreams.

~*~

Sarah had a vague sense of time as it slowly ticked by. She was comfortably nested in Din Djarin’s lap, leaned back against his warm, solid chest, held securely in strong arms with Grogu swaddled in the blankets he’d pulled up over them all.

Once she was sure the child was sound asleep, she quietly recounted her experiences on the mission to her partner, beginning at the drop down into the canyon pass.

It was easier to talk about it, here and safe in this hushed space they shared together. Din was a good listener. Now and then, he’d steer the conversation to keep her on track, and patiently gave her the time she needed to gather her thoughts and sort through both the information and the flood of emotions recent memories brought forward. 

The fear, the thrill. 

Her irritation at Sabine for compromising an already bad hiding spot, and her relief when she’d successfully diverted the Stormtrooper’s attention from discovering their group. The horror of entering the laboratory facilities, the terror she’d felt when Gideon’s gun had been shoved beneath her jaw - and her pride at being bold enough to draw his attention in the first place.

Her delayed disturbance over the excitement she had felt at forcing Gideon to bend to her will, a response to the way the Force had prickled against her skin in an addictive, unpleasant sort of way. It felt like she’d walked a dangerous tightrope, and barely managed to keep her balance over a terrible fall.

In telling him everything uncensored now from beginning to end, she knew it would be easier to face the others with a level head, and give them what little information she had gathered.

“You know, I almost flipped you off the ship when I saw your helmet in the window,” she admitted. “Some warning would have been nice.”

“Wasn’t time for it,” he answered, unapologetic, and Sarah couldn’t resist a smile.

“My knight in shining armor.”

“Your _Mandalorian_ ,” he corrected. She liked the possessive way his arms tightened around her as he spoke. She liked that he agreed he was hers _._

“You’re right. I’ll take you over a knight, any day,” she confessed, then rested her head back against his shoulder. His chin settled atop her head, edged by the beskar helmet, and she sighed happily.

She hadn’t known this was exactly what she needed after the day’s chaotic events, until she’d seen him remove the most un-cuddly parts of his armor in silent invitation.

“Bane of the Moff,” he murmured as a warm hand came up to brush alongside the small cut on her forehead. She was pretty sure she’d gotten it when she’d smashed her head into Gideon’s nose. “Nexu isn’t good enough.”

Sarah closed her eyes, and remembered.

“Sarah’s fine,” she demurred.

“You are strong,” he stated simply, and Sarah blushed all the way down to her toes. Coming from a Mandalorian - from  _ him _ \- that was a high compliment. Comfortable silence fell between them as they relaxed, until minutes later Sarah heard a soft, barely audible noise she wasn’t sure she’d caught right.

She held her breath to listen, and when she was certain, she brought her good hand up to her mouth to smother a sharp intake of breath caught between shock and delighted surprise.

Din Djarin was asleep.

And he had an adorable snore his helmet couldn’t quite muffle.

~*~

Din Djarin was wide awake and in an uncharacteristically good mood. Between the time spent with his family and the oncoming feast, he felt certain this was what it felt like to feel completely at home and content.

He couldn’t even find it in himself to feel the usual lingering resentment Marrek typically coaxed out of him, as he stood at the door to the man’s  _ Vheh’yaim, _ and knocked soundly on the frame.

“Well if it isn’t my new favorite two people,” Marrek greeted with a roguish smile as he lifted up the flap for them.

“Hey! I thought I was your favorite?” Sabine questioned from inside. “I’m the one that got the paint for your ridiculous orange armor.”

“You’re not a hilarious drunk, or a Moff-punching wildcat,” Marrek pointed out.

“It was a  _ headbutt,” _ Sarah clarified with a grimace. Marrek whistled appreciatively.

Din withheld a mildly amused snort as he entered the space with Sarah in tow, and turned to take the Foundling from her. If she was hoping to keep the rumors of her exploits from being embellished, she was going to be disappointed.

“Do they have room for another cook in the kitchens?” he questioned, and caught his partner’s surprised double-take.

“Sarah’s going to be way too busy for that,” Sabine pointed out.

“I wasn’t volunteering her,” Din clarified, and Marrek grinned while both women looked at him with appraising, surprised expressions.

There wasn’t another word for it; he felt a little smug.

“Oh, now  _ this _ I have to see. You two ladies have fun,  _ Nauu’baar _ and I are going to the kitchens,” Marrek declared. Din Djarin fixed him with a flat look even though he knew the man wouldn’t see it. His posture probably conveyed the expression clearly enough.

_ “Nauu’baar?” _ Sarah questioned.

“Lightweight,” Sabine translated with a grin. “Really, Din? Just  _ one _ shot of  _ tihaar _ got you wasted?”

The irony of her statement wasn’t lost on him. Sarah wasn’t the only one with a spreading reputation.

“...It was a mug,” he clarified reluctantly, then decided that when confronted by the talkative bard and two overly curious females, a strategic retreat was a valid option. “Let’s go.”

And he was out the door before any of them could protest, long strides eating up the ground on his way towards the kitchens as Grogu burbled happily at the movement, hands up in the air.

The kid’s delight was infectious.

He heard Marrek’s muffled goodbye, followed swiftly by the man’s boots crunching on the earth as he jogged to catch up, then fell into step beside him.

“So, do you  _ actually _ cook, or are you just hoping to sneak off with a few morsels to stuff your face with when no-ones looking?” Marrek asked. Din didn’t even spare him a glance.

“I cook.”

“Sweet. So, what’s your specialty? I make a mean  _ tiingiilar _ if I do say so myself, which I do.”

He’d never admit it, but the mention of the blisteringly hot casserole dish made Din’s mouth water in anticipation. He hadn’t eaten the traditional meal since before his home covert moved into the sewers, and keeping gardens became… difficult.

_ “Heturam’loras,” _ he answered after a moment. It was a scorching dish of small cubes of meat, skewered and rolled in a bready batter, and glazed in a sticky, spicy syrup. It was fairly easy to make a large quantity of, which made it ideal for a feast such as this where there would be many partaking.

Marrek whistled appreciatively.

“Did you warn Sarah about real Mandalorian cuisine?” the bard prompted.

Din Djarin’s lips twitched.

“No.”

“Evil. Twenty credits says she starts a brawl with you over it.”

“You sure you want to lose more money betting on us?” he asked, and cast the man a glance. He hadn’t forgotten about the dance.

“Shit, they told you?”

Din Djarin looked forward, and let his silence speak for him.

Marrek grumbled, and in short order they had reached the kitchens. The large structure was a flurry of activity that stretched beyond the confines of the main building - wooden planks and sheets of scrap metal had been laid out over stacked boxes to serve as makeshift tables. They ringed the entire cooking area.

A colorful swarm of Mandalorians flocked around them, some busy organizing dishware while others fussed over arranging delicate platters of small finger foods and improbably ornate looking appetizers. Bowls of dipping sauces and chunky, spiced salsa’s adorned the growing spread, many of which were covered by cloth or lids to protect them from insects… or hungry fingers trying to sneak a premature snack.

_ Skraan’Ikase _ literally translated into ‘small eats’ from  _ Mando’a _ to the Basic language, and for good reason. This sort of fare wasn’t something that could be easily prepared or eaten when out in the field, and it could take several plates of the assorted morsels before a Mandalorian’s stomach was satisfied with enough nourishment to call it a fulfilling meal.

Din Djarin came to a halt just outside the flurry of activity, and scanned the crowd for the woman he wanted to see.

Mars’ vibrant purple armor, though rather unique in color, was difficult to spot with so many gathered. In the end, she found them.

Din started forward the moment he caught sight of her swift, choppy stride as her stocky legs propelled her over the ground in a straight line towards them. People darted out of her way as they caught sight of her thunderous expression, and those who didn’t move quick enough got a wet dish towel snapped at them.

She met them halfway, squared her stance, then thrust a finger at him accusingly. Grogu shrank back against his chest, ears drooped.

_ “You,” _ Mars began loudly, voice raised to be heard over the commotion, “need to talk to your son. I had no less than  _ six _ instructors come running to find me over the course of the two days you were gone.”

“What did he do?” Din asked warily as a sense of foreboding fell over his shoulders. Marrek’s widening grin didn’t help one bit.

“What did he  _ do?!” _ Mars cried, and threw her hands up in the air. “I’ll tell you what he did,” she continued, as she turned her raised hand into a closed fist. She proceeded to flick a finger up one at a time to tick off her list, as she began to recite what antics Grogu had gotten up to after she’d picked him up in the early morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun Trivia:
> 
> Grogu's got his own character arc.  
> It's probably the slowest burn thing I have ever written. But it's there, and you'll see more of it, don't worry :D
> 
> If you're wondering about the timeframe of their travel between the Imperial base Sarah totally trashed and the Covert they hang out at - I have an explanation for it, and though I tried to convey it in the story, I thought it might be too subtle. Something I will likely tweak in the future once I figure out the best way to show it.
> 
> They take their time flying to the Imperial base, both out of major caution to approach slowly, and because there's no rush to -get- there. It gave them time to rest and relax on the flight in and go over final notes, brush up on any last questions, and largely to make sure Dakara and Din each got enough rest shared between them, rather than having to cramp it and they ran a mission on low sleep hours.
> 
> When you have the luxury of opportunity to be as prepared as possible - you take it. Star Wars is full of crazy-intense missions seemingly thrown together on a whim and executed on the fly, and I liked the idea of exploring some runs where the characters *actually* take the time to prep for stuff and go in prepared.
> 
> Din flies like a mad maniac on the way back, top speed, and their very indirect flight still takes them ~5-6 hours travel time to get back. Home just in time for dinner preparations!
> 
> \---
> 
> Mando'a Translations:
> 
> Su'cuy - the informal variant of "Su cuy'gar" (hello) which basically is just "hi"
> 
> Skraan'Ikase - The story explains this one well, but here's the dictionary's explanation for those curious what i based the lore I'm exploring here off of: "assorted small snacks like meze or tapas - *small eats* - a celebratory meal for Mandos because it can take hours to eat, and the dishes are often fiddly, a contrast to the easy-to-eat, quick meals necessary in the field"
> 
> Naturally  
> Because I'm ridiculous  
> I took one look at that and screeched "I WANT TO WRITE ABOUT FANCY FOOD"
> 
> Vheh'yaim - "Earth House" see Chapter 9's notes for more info.
> 
> Ibac'ner - Grogu says this (or, well, he TRIES to say it) during family cuddle time. In the same cruel fashion that I told you Din didn't confess his love to Sarah a few chapters back ("Gar solus sol'tan" - he called her unique), that's not what Grogu is saying here... Technically.
> 
> He IS expressing his affection for them, in a very cute, simplistically childish way - Ibac'ner means "That's mine / it's mine" So he's basically saying Sarah and Din are his (family). Cue Finding Nemo seagulls of "MINE? MINE? MIIIINE?"
> 
> I chose this phrase for two reasons:
> 
> 1) It sounds ridiculously close to a particular noise he makes a few times, later in the TV series as the show progresses. There's a distinct trend I noticed of Grogu progressing from "generic baby noises" into "Wait is he SAYING something?" that I have tried very hard to capture in this story. It's my own little easter egg to that ;)
> 
> 2) He's a child, and he's been under Mando'a language lessons, and I figure he's picked up some of the simpler phrases / words and has been struggling to grasp the easiest ones to learn. Simple, direct things are the first things you typically pick up in a language, even if your use of them isn't exactly "correct" grammatically speaking.
> 
> Heturam'loras - my own mashed-together word. Don't squint too hard at it. My grasp of Mando'a is only marginally better than Sarah's is at this point. It basically translates as "spicy meat" but I am inferring in this story that Din is referencing a specific dish's name. There's only a small handful of "traditional Mandalorian cuisine" dishes / beverages on the wiki, so I've taken a lot of creative license ;)


	17. Grogu

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnHmskwqCCQ&ab_channel=CalebHudnall
> 
> This chapter has a theme song.
> 
> You're welcome.
> 
> :ok_hand:

The first thing Grogu did when the purple-armored, curly-haired woman accepted him into her arms was  _ raspberry _ at her, then he squirmed in her hold with a squealed protest. It was  _ much _ too early to be awake; from where they were at the entrance of his home ship, he could see that stars were still bright in the dark sky, and the night-time air stung crisp and sharp.

His mother had left almost as soon as she had stopped to see him, and he didn’t understand why he was being passed off into someone else’s care. She normally brought him with her.

And he  _ knew _ it wasn’t time for morning lessons, because they never started until after they all shared breakfast together.

There were too many things different about this morning that he didn’t like - not the least of which was an unusual tension in the air that lingered around his parents like a miasma. There had been an unpleasant finality in his mother’s goodbye and the tenderness she’d shown as she’d planted a kiss on his head, and it made him uneasy.

She had tried too hard to be normal about it, and he’d noticed.

“Behave,” his father quietly ordered, with a severe tone laced in an otherwise calm voice. Grogu growled low and dropped his ears as the Mandalorian carrying him adjusted her hold. He didn’t  _ want _ to behave. He wanted to go back to sleep in his cozy nest, or see his mother. Her arms were comfortable and familiar. He wanted his dad to take him back.

This stranger was still all-too-new to him, with one arm warm and soft and the other hard and cold from her singular metal guard. She always left him in mostly boring classes and told him to  _ behave _ when he would rather be eating or playing or investigating curiosities. She fussed and cooed over him, and he didn’t like it.

“Don’t you worry one bit, wee one,” Mars soothed. “Your parents will be back before you know it.”

They were leaving? Grogu whipped his head from her to look at his father, ears pricked in alarm.

“Thank you for watching him,” Din answered, and Grogu’s heart sank. He didn’t want them to go.

He squirmed and reached out with one hand, grasping in the air, and felt his panic ebb as his dad put a single, orange-gloved finger out for him to hold on to. It contrasted sharply against the deep brown that covered Din’s palm and wrist, and Grogu wished he wasn’t wearing gloves at all.

He wanted to know what warmth hid beneath the cold exterior of dark clothes and solid metal.

“If all goes well, we’ll be back tomorrow before it’s dark out,” his father patiently explained over Grogu’s grumbled protest. “Trust Mars. She’ll be looking out for you until then.”

If all went well?

What if it didn’t?

He tried to reach out with his mind to make his worries known, even as his father gently tugged his finger free and stepped back by the door controls. Too far away to be easily reached, Grogu gave up his half-started attempt and instead warbled at him in a strained, high-pitched coo.

“Oh shush, you’ll be fine,” Mars gently admonished, then turned back to his father. “You just take care of yourselves out there. Where’s Sarah?” she asked curiously, and Grogu brightened considerably. His mother would sense his distress; she always did. He could convince her not to leave him behind.

“With Sabine for final drills… If she didn’t fall asleep on the way there,” his father answered, and grogu was baffled by the amusement held in the rich voice. He didn’t see anything funny about it.

“Hah! I suppose we wore her out. Well, she’ll have plenty of time to catch up on rest on the flight. You leave in the afternoon, right? Come home in one piece,” Mars added, then waved a cheery goodby and struck off into the covert.

Grogu couldn’t even get a last look at his father. Mars’ broad chest was too big for him to have a hope of peeking around, and he listened forlornly to the sound of the door hissing shut over the crunch of boots on dirt.

Despite his best efforts, when his unwanted babysitter tucked him into bed in her domed hut that smelled of campfire smoke and pleasant spices that tickled his nose, Grogu fell asleep.

He woke before she did, well before sunrise with a grumble in his tummy and a pang of loneliness, because he knew he wasn’t going to have breakfast with his family.

He pushed the thick blanket off of himself and wiggled up into a sitting position, then looked to the right. His caretaker was sound asleep beside him, snoring on their shared, raised sleeping pallet. An arm was flopped over her eyes, and he could see the timer counting down on her vambrace’s digital screen display.

He wasn’t familiar with the strange clock - a large circle drawn into a multitude of increasingly smaller segments. The first ring held eight large bars, and the second was divided into twelve. The final section split the entire space into far too many tiny pie-slices for him to count, each marked with stick-like figures he belatedly recognized as the written numerals of  _ Mando’a. _ A small circle, also cut into slices but unmarked, was offset into the lower face of the larger center.

He could tell enough to figure the purple woman wasn’t intending to be awake anytime soon, and he looked around the dim space with drooped ears.

He was hungry. His ears perked when he spotted a cloth-covered basket by the doorway, and he sniffed. The warm spice in the air smelled like food, and he struggled out of the bedding until he could drop himself the few inches it took to get to the reed floor.

He stared down at his toes, hidden beneath the hem of his robe, and wiggled them. The surface beneath his feet was a strange texture of bumpy rods, tightly woven, and had the slightest of give to it as he padded across the floor then sat down in front of the basket.

The smell had grown stronger as he drew near. Excited, he fisted tiny fingers in the white cloth covering - and pulled.

He chirruped in delight as the fabric crumpled in front of him over his lap, and revealed a heaping pile of shiny, fresh fruits. Bulbous reds, oranges, purples, and some that were a brilliant blue riddled with neon green striations. There was more than enough for him to make a meal out of.

He grunted as he stood and fumbled a hand for them, and the red one he’d been going for tumbled backwards on the pile, out of his reach. He huffed, then dug the tips of his claws with both hands into one of the round blue fruits, and drew it back.

It reminded him of the produce the strange robbed figures had fed him on the desert planet, which had been sweet and juicy and full of pulpy seeds.

He plopped down and brought the comparably large fruit up to his face, then bit down into it in delight.

~*~

Mars jolted awake with her knife drawn, halfway out of her bed before she fully registered what had woke her. No one else was in her  _ vheh’yaim _ besides herself and the squealing Foundling left in her care.

Her gaze dropped to the floor where Grogu sat and wiped desperately at his mouth, little paws covered in the slimey, pulpy yellow insides of a Blue Scorcher, one of the blisteringly hot peppers she’d harvested. The rest of the fruit lay discarded on the floor by his feet, four large bites taken out of it.

It always took a bit for the heat to kick in.

Mars sheathed her knife then checked the clock on her vambrace, even as the child came running towards her with a garbled plea as he panted in quick, gulping breaths. It was barely five minutes into the second watch, which meant she’d been woken up at least an hour before she’d wanted to.

A warm weight crashed against her leg, and she looked down with a sigh at the child who grabbed at her pantsleg and bounced on his toes.

“Well, it serves you right. Next time,  _ ask _ before just helping yourself to food,” she patiently explained, then reached down and scooped the little guy up. He whined at her, and Mars fought back a smile as she tutted at him. “Come on, let’s get you washed up.”

She sighed as he buried his face into the sleeve of her bodysuit, the proceeded to wipe his mouth on the fabric.

“Don’t get it in your eyes,” Mars warned. “Your dad would kill me if you went blind.”

_ That _ earned her an alarmed squeal, but he stopped smearing his face on her clothes.

She had forgotten how much she didn’t miss having a babe to watch over. Ten years since her eldest had left home to start his own family, and she had gotten used to the nights of largely uninterrupted sleep. She much preferred managing the general oversight of others’ children, and being able to pass them back to their respective families when her job was done.

The warm, adorable weight in her arms didn’t quite make up for her early start to the morning.

~*~

Grogu had forgotten how much he didn’t like being fussed over by someone who clearly didn’t understand him. Maybe it was unfair, since he couldn’t really put his finger on one  _ specific _ reason he felt the purple woman was inordinately different from his surrogate parents, but she was different enough that it irked him.

Maybe it was the way she seemed to only half pay attention to him as she washed the stinging, burning goo off his skin, or maybe it was the fact she seemed more ready to scold him for his protests than listen to his discomforts.

Maybe it was just that he didn’t like being left with her, when he’d rather be safe and comfortable with his family.

Whatever it was, he didn’t like Mars.

“Oh, stop that, or your face is going to stay stuck that way,” she admonished him as he stuck his tongue out at her and scrunched his face up to make his feelings known. At least it got her attention, even if she seemed upsettingly amused by his unhappy growl instead of recognizing his sour mood. Her bright smile didn’t help. Sarah’s smiles were better.

He wriggled in her hold as he was picked up, and then they were leaving the small shower facility she’d brought him to for washing up. He grumbled as he recognized their path.

He was going to be left alone,  _ again, _ in a sea of mostly unfamiliar faces.

“Good morning, Zap,” his captor greeted cheerily as Grogu sunk into the deep collar of his robe, ears pinned back. “Can you manage getting him some breakfast for me? I need to go start my shift in the kitchens soon.”

Grogu perked slightly. Food was an improvement.

“Sure thing,” the tall, yellow-armored woman agreed. Grogu looked between the two as he was passed from one person to the next, then stuck his tongue out at Mars.

He squealed when she reached out and gently pinched the tip of it between her bare fingers.

“Now what did I tell you about doing that? Stop making faces. It’s very rude,” she explained, and he pulled his tongue back into his mouth.

“Someone’s in a crabby mood this morning,” Zap observed, and Grogu growled as he slumped in her hold, very much put-out. He was  _ not _ crabby.

“Someone got into a Blue Scorcher for a sneaky snack this morning,” Mars said with her annoyingly amused cheer.

“Oh dear. Well, we won’t make that mistake again, will we?” his new caretaker asked, her bright, scuffed helmet turned down to face him. Grogu ignored her, and instead glowered at Mars.

His mood improved considerably once he had a full, happy tummy. Zap had fed him with the strange, nearly see-through bread he had come to learn Mandalorians ate as a large portion of their diet, soaked in water to make it soft and mostly palatable. She’d supplemented it with a chewy strip of meat.

His mood soured again when it became clear she intended him to do as he’d done in the days prior, and settled him down on the ground in the group of other children. A few of them gave him curious looks, and one of the human girls couldn’t stop grinning at him like she saw something funny.

When Zap took her place at the head of the class, everyone looked forward and straightened their backs, and Grogu stuffed his hands into his sleeves to keep them warm. The sun had just breached the horizon, and it was still somewhat chilly out.

He was bored. Zap was going over constellation groupings and their traditional history. Her lecture was interspersed with small quizzes on the  _ Mando’a _ translations for key words, and rhyming passages Grogu enjoyed the sound of, yet couldn’t easily replicate.

He looked up. The sun had barely moved, and he thought moodily about how long it would be before it set, and then rose again. Tomorrow seemed like so very far away.

He looked back down, and peeked around him. To his left was a young Twi’lek, about twice his height while sitting. Her pink skin was pretty in the early morning light, and he liked her. She’d helped him figure out how to move his hands during a knot-tying lesson yesterday, and she had a pleasant voice.

She wasn’t paying attention to him now, though, all her focus on the lecture-board and the glowing blue lines Zap had drawn over it and pointed to.

Grogu considered. He knew he couldn’t just up and walk away from the lessons, because when he’d tried that before, one of the older children who sat on the outermost edges of their group had picked him up, and brought him right back to his assigned spot.

No one was looking at him now though, and Zap turned her back to begin drawing out a new constellation.

He knew he wasn’t supposed to, but it wasn’t quite enough to stop him from lifting his hand as he narrowed his eyes in concentration. If Zap couldn’t lecture them, then the class would end, and he could go find a cozy space to nap the day away and maybe make it go by faster.

Energy, warm and prickly, gathered in his palm as the air shifted around him. He reached out for what he wanted, and willed it into being.

It didn’t quite go as he expected.

~*~

Mars turned away from the pile of dishes she’d been frantically sorting and nearly walked right into a grouchy looking Zap, a recalcitrant Grogu held securely out at arm’s length in both gloved hands.

“What in the galaxy  _ happened?” _ Mars asked in disbelief. The normally mellow-mooded woman had a severe look of disapproval on her young face, fresh scorch marks on her armor, and her shoulder-length bronze hair stuck ridiculously out from her head in perfectly straight lines. A small zip of static electricity flickered over it, and Mars had to cover her mouth to keep a laugh down as the woman twitched.

Zap’s name was a little too on-the-nose today, it seemed.

_ “Someone, _ ” the instructor began, and thrust the Foundling at Mars, who had to quickly flop the towel she’d been holding over a shoulder to accept him, “Decided that he was done with lessons, and fried the circuit board of the holo-display. I have to go make repairs on it if the blasted thing can even be salvaged, and  _ this _ little one needs supervision. Dah’na will come back to get him for afternoon lessons.”

Mars grimaced openly.

“I can’t,” she began as she shook her head. “I’ve got the cleanup from breakfast and--” But Zap was already walking away, ineffectually trying to smooth down her static-charged hair as she muttered about troublesome kids.

Mars glared down at the child, who looked up at her with rebellion in his squinty black eyes. How had she ever thought this Foundling to be  _ cute? _

“Well. Sit here and don’t move,” she decided, and set the child on the counter. He obeyed, hands stuffed in his little sleeves. Mars scrutinized him for a moment, then turned away to fetch the tub of soap she needed to refill the dispenser.

When she turned back around, the child was gone.

“Grogu?” she called, more alarmed than offended this time as she set the container down and looked underneath the sink, then around the room. A few heads turned her way as she rushed around the long, curved counter to the other side, just in time to see the little brat waddling as fast as he could over the ground towards a stretch of scraggly, tall grass he no doubt intended to hide in. “Hey! Get back here,” she called, and took off after him.

Her day dissolved from there.

~*~

Well fed and in a good mood at the sour expression his caretaker wore, Grogu settled comfortably into his blankets, ready to sleep the night away. Maybe, just maybe, his parents would be back in the morning. He was eager to get to it.

“You are such a handful,” the purple woman groused as she pulled her helmet off and set it on the ground beside the bed pallet. “Now, if you’re up before me again, you wake me up this time and I’ll get you a nice, warm breakfast for that bottomless pit you call a stomach. Deal?” she asked archly, then put her hands on her hips as she stared him down.

Grogu considered, and almost chose to pretend he didn’t understand what she was asking him. Only, he had no desire to revisit his incident with the burning fruit, and it was much faster for Mars to get him something to eat than to hunt it down himself.

He beeped an affirmative at her and pricked his ears for good measure, and the woman sighed, exasperated.

“Good. Stay put this time,” she muttered, then crawled under the covers, rolled over, and put an arm around him. He growled, low and annoyed, but she didn’t budge. After a moment, he let it be, because it was much warmer to be tucked up against her chest now that she’d removed the front breastplate.

In no time at all, he was asleep.

When he woke, this time it was because Mars gave him a gentle shake, and Grogu looked around hopefully as soon as he sat up.

His ears drooped when he recognized no one was here to collect him, but he was pleased to find a small plate offered to him, filled with the familiar thin crackers, and one thick strip of smoked, salted meat.

He was less thrilled when it was clear she fully intended him to sit in for lessons again this morning, and  _ this _ time, he was placed directly into the lap of the Twi’lek girl to keep an eye over him.

At least it was someone he liked. She had a warm, happy aura, nicer than Mars’ sour mood and distant exasperation.

It was easier to focus on class this time. His friend proved to be good company, even if her job was to keep him here when he’d rather be elsewhere. She made the review of constellations a little more fun by explaining things to him in sing-song rhymes, and mimed animals with her hands. When Zap was satisfied by the response from the surrounding students, they moved on to something more interesting.

“Hold it like this,” the Twi’lek girl instructed as she pushed an oblong magnet into his hand. In her other she held a slim needle, and in front of them on the ground rested a hollowed out gourd he had helped her scoop the seed and pulp out of. She carefully put the needle into his other hand, and he pinched it with two fingers. “There you go! Now, rub the magnet in a straight line, like this,” she explained. He let her guide his hand as she showed him, and gently ran the tip over the sharp bit of metal.

Ahead of them, Zap explained alternative methods for charging the magnetic field of the needle to serve as the compass point, but Grogu was more interested in what he held in front of him.

He liked this. It felt useful, and there was something pleasant about the tickle of energy in the black rock he held that reminded him of Sarah, with the way it reached out in a dense bubble. It made him think of warm smiles and cozy cuddles.

After a few strokes, his friend left him to it as she carefully reached over his head to pick up their little gourd. She dumped water from a canteen into it until it reached the top, and picked a leaf off the ground from a flat, glossy plant Grogu had learned was edible.

When she was done, she settled her hands by him and quietly began to count each of his needle strokes in  _ Mando’a, _ her high-pitched voice almost musical.

_ “Solus, t’ad, ehn, cuir, rayshe’a, resol, e’tad….” _

Grogu enjoyed listening to it, and repeated the numbers in his head as she counted. He was a little sad when she finally declared it done. Then, his friend instructed him to place the needle on the floating leaf, and after a moment, he complied.

Once he drew his hand back, he marveled to see the little point quiver and spin lazily in the water, guided by seemingly nothing as it turned to point North. His nose quivered, and his ears pricked. Was it the Force?

“Very good, both of you,” Zap praised, and Grogu jerked up in surprise to see her standing beside them, a warm smile on her face.

It made him miss his mom.

His friend quipped something cheery in  _ Mando’a, _ and he sighed as he dropped back against her belly, suddenly very tired even though the day was still early.

As Zap continued to walk down the few rows of children and help those who hadn’t yet assembled their compasses, he got the feeling this was going to take a while.

It gave him an idea.

Mind made up, Grogu closed his eyes and concentrated.

It was strange to meditate with someone else holding him, and he was glad his classmate didn’t interrupt him as he struggled to gather his focus. It was warm, at least, settled in her crossed legs with his robe well tucked around his neck to keep out any drafts.

As his world narrowed to the lazy, expansive hum of energy he could sense flowing all around the surrounding area, he drew his attention inwards.

It was hard, because unlike the last time he’d meditated, there wasn’t any external guidance. This was entirely his own initiative, and it almost made him mad that he hadn’t been practicing.

If he had been, maybe this would be easier. He reluctantly let go of his tactile senses, and the sound of a light breeze and the chatter of his classmates faded into nothing. Zap’s light footsteps were gone from his perception. He couldn’t feel the cool air, or the warm body he knew his back rested against. The earthy, damp air tinged with a distant spice from the kitchens grew faint, then vanished entirely.

As his focus narrowed inch by inch, he tried to find what it was he  _ was _ looking for, and felt his heart surge in triumph as he did. A subtle shimmer of warmth, a bright touch of familiarity - the energy that he knew covered his body like an invisible cloak, protective and safe and secretive.

The mark of his mother’s lingering presence.

He liked the way her distinctive aura felt. She was different from other Force users he had known, because instead of her energy being held close and guarded and difficult to sense unless he actively reached out, she was like a bright light that drew his attention to her. It radiated around her wherever she was, sometimes stronger and sometimes lesser, yet always present. She was like a secret that hid in plain sight, there to find for those who knew how to look.

It was the only reason he felt confident he might be able to reach her; she was already reaching out herself.

As he felt out the woven net of Force surrounding him, he concentrated on it - then stretched out his awareness with his ability, and tried to follow it outwards. He just knew if he could look far enough, he could find her.

Like a thread of delicate spider silk, he caught a trail, and his awareness raced away from his body.

“...ogu? Grogu?” his friend asked in alarm, a hand on his shoulder as she gave him a shake. Grogu let out a pained cry as the over-loud noise assaulted his sensitive ears, and brutally yanked him back from his trance. He felt disoriented for several too-long moments, listed sideways and gasping for breath as his tiny chest heaved.

_ “Aran’adiik! _ Something’s wrong with Grogu,” the Twi’lek cried, and Grogu felt the hot sting of water in his eyes as he blinked angrily.

He had been so very close.

Bright yellow filled his vision as Zap dropped to a crouch in front of him, and then he was moving, the world tilting and turning around him, and he felt his breakfast start to turn unpleasantly in his stomach.

Before it could make its way up and out, Grogu’s vision went dark.

~*~

“I’m a little busy,” Mars explained in exasperation as she looked up from the chopping board, only to find Marrek standing across from the counter in all his brilliant orange glory, helmet under an arm. As she raised her eyes up his tall frame and caught his uncharacteristically severe expression, dread clutched her heart before he even spoke.

“Zap wants you at the med-house, Din’s Foundling passed out during class.”

_ “What?” _ she demanded, and hastily set down her knife. She snatched up a towel on her way around the counter. “Shar! Please take over for me, get the meat covered - I’ll take care of it when I’m back,” she called as she wiped off her hands.

“Got it,” the woman answered, then turned away from the stovetop to tend to it.

“What  _ happened?” _ Mars snapped as Marrek fell into step beside her. As soon as they were free of the kitchens, she broke into a light jog and stuffed the clean side of the towel through her belt

“Don’t know, but I got hollered at to come get you.”

_ “Osik,” _ Mars swore. “Of all the days. Is he alright?”

“Don’t know,” the bard repeated, and Mars gave up questioning him.

When they reached the long, tubular building that housed their small assortment of recovery cots and medical equipment, Mars found Zap waiting for her just inside the entrance.

“Dorian will fill you in, I have to get back with the other kids,” Zap explained in a rush with a touch to Mars’ shoulder. Mars spared her a glance and a quick nod, then brushed past. Relieved of duty, the yellow armored woman took her leave.

Two other Mandalorians stood in the long, sectioned-off room. Eight cots lined the walls, one of which was occupied by a teenaged boy with a bandaged head who looked to be asleep, and Mars recognized him as one of the older Foundlings.

She found Dorian at Grogu’s bedside farther down, a short man in unpainted armor, over a cream bodysuit with a gray belt. The only decoration he wore was his clan crest, a flying Star Dragon, and the bright red medical mark on his left pauldron.

Beside him stood his firstborn daughter, Ruusaan, a young girl on the cusp of womanhood and soon to be accepting her helmet. She wore similar armor to her father, only painted a light green-blue that brought to mind seafoam.

And last but not least, Mars found her temporary ward.

Grogu lay at the upper end of the cot, propped halfway up on a thin pillow, his face looking strangely drawn and pale. He had a pinkish hue about his eyes that she was certain hadn’t been as noticeable before.

“What happened?” she demanded as Marrek came to a stop a few feet back to give them space.

“We’re not exactly sure,” Dorian began, his high tenor rich and riveting. “Zap says he was sitting in Zera’s lap when she called her over - he’d been unnaturally still, and unresponsive. I’m told he woke briefly, then passed out entirely on the way here.”

Mars thought in dread of what might happen if Sarah and Din came back to find their Foundling in such a state, and it mingled in equal proportion to her own concern for the child.

“What’s his status now?” Marrek spoke up.

“Sleeping; his heart rate is accelerated at around two hundred beats per minute, but without knowing his species, I can’t tell you if that’s normal or not. His breathing is steady, and temperature seems to be normal. Zap mentioned he seems to run around the same temperature as we do.”

Mars thought in dismay that she should have brought the child in for a medical exam right away, just so they would know what ‘normal’ was for him.

“I’ll radio his parents, they need to know,” she decided as she looked down at the child.

“Don’t, that’s a bad idea,” Marrek firmly interjected. Dorian’s helmet lifted to look at her as his daughter quietly slipped away to check on the other patient.

“He’s right. They’re on a mission, it can wait until they’re back,” the medic reasoned, and Mars grimaced.

He was probably right.

Actually, she knew he was right, but it still didn’t sit well with her. If she was in their place, she’d want to know what was happening back home.

And that was probably why she was never selected to go on any runs.

Suddenly sour in mood at the errant thought, she shoved it aside then ran fingers through her hair, and realized she’d left her helmet back in the kitchens in her haste. It was not looking out to be a good day for her.

“Is there anything I can do?” she asked tiredly.

“Stay here with him in case he wakes. He’ll want a friendly face, and Sabine warned me the child has powers. I’d rather he didn’t mistake us as a threat if he’s disoriented and alone.”

At least  _ someone _ had thought to fill the medic in preemptively.

Three heads turned to look down at the sound of a tiny burble, and Mars felt relief flood her chest as Grogu’s elongated ears slowly lifted from their drooped state. It wasn’t much, but it was progress.

“Hey, wee one, how do you feel?” she asked as she reached out a hand to brush a finger against the side of his arm. He turned his head a bit to look at her, then closed his eyes with a deep sigh. “That bad, huh? Maybe he’s sick?” she wondered aloud.

“I don’t think he is, judging by the ratio of white-to-red blood cell counts,” Dorian speculated.

“I dunno, he looks pretty wan,” Marrek observed, and Mars wondered why the bard was still here. Probably the same reason she was - concern.

Dorian lingered with them a little longer, then eventually walked off to fuss over equipment and speak with his daughter in hushed voices. Mars found a fold-up stool, hauled it away from the wall to sit on by the head of the cot, and waited.

Marrek remained standing, and she was rather glad to have his steady presence as he let her stew in her thoughts.

Eventually, the Foundling stirred again, and Mars breathed a sigh of relief as his wide eyes slowly blinked open.

~*~

Grogu was obliged to answer questions, and he didn’t want to.

So he didn’t.

At first.

He didn’t like the room he was in - there was a chemical smell in the air he recognized, the too-sweet tang of Bacta, and medical equipment dotted the edges. It was different from most facilities he had been in, with its organic walls and pallet floor covered in reed mats, and the long, tubular shape.

But it reminded him strongly of unpleasant memories anyways, and he was still upset over his failure to reach out to his mother.

And he was hungry. Using the Force always left him tired and weak and craving food to nourish his depleted energy.

“You can have something to eat if you can shake your head to tell us yes or no,” Mars patiently bartered, and he glowered up at her. “Are you hurting?” she tried again, her arms folded on the cot as she kneeled on the ground. It put her just above eye level with him, and he cast wary glances at the medic who stood behind her. His silvery armor reminded him of his father, only it had a different design with a segmented chestplate, and it wasn’t smooth and shiny but buffed to a dull sheen.

He looked at Mars, and he begrudgingly nodded his head. Just once. He  _ did _ hurt. Right in the center of his chest, tight and hot and uncomfortable, and the loneliness and misery wouldn’t go away.

“Can you tell me where you’re hurt?” Mars prompted, and he shook his head. She sighed. “Are you sick?”

Did homesick count?

He shook his head no.

The questions continued until he grew tired of answering, and his tummy grumbled. He let himself flop back on the pillow, then turned his face away from her, a clear enough message that he was done conversing.

He looked back when the smell of food reached his nose, and his ears lifted as the medic placed a small plate of crackers, fruit, and slices of meat down.

He immediately grabbed one of the fleshy chunks and gnawed on it.

“Well, I think he’s fine to go back to lessons. If this happens again, bring him in and we’ll give him some fluids.”

Grogu whipped his head around to stare at the medic, the food falling out of his mouth. He didn’t like the sound of that.

A hand patted him on the head, and he scrunched back from the unwelcome contact to glare at Mars. Then he was being picked up, and she brought the plate with them. He protested at first, then settled when it was clear she intended to hold it within his reach, and he slowly returned to eating.

He was  _ hungry. _

~*~

This time when Marrek showed up at the kitchens, Mars immediately put the pot lid over the dish she was assembling and grabbed a towel to dry her hands off. She had only  _ just _ finished assembling the thin slices of meat amidst an array of peppers and diced vegetables, and she thought with dismay that she might have to ask someone else to get it cooking for her if it was going to be ready in time for tonight’s  _ Skraan’ikase. _

“What is it  _ this _ time?” she asked, and frowned severely when she realized the bard was  _ smiling. _

“How fast can you run?” he asked conversationally.

“...Why?” Mars questioned, already not liking where this was going.

“Because I don’t have my jetpack on, and in about ten seconds, I’m going to enjoy watching you turn as purple as your armor.”

Mars recoiled, taken aback.

“Why on earth would… I...” She trailed off as she heard the sound of running feet and loud shouts in both  _ Mando’a _ and Basic, and the rush of a small engine. Alarm spiked, tempered only by Marrek’s obvious good humor, and she brushed past him to reach the edge of the kitchens just in time to see an improbable sight.

The hover-cart they used for hauling firewood across the covert zoomed down the dirt path ahead of her, zig-zagging wildly as its sole occupant clumsily drove the thing forward.

Of  _ course _ it was Din’s Foundling.

Mars reached over and smacked Marrek on the back of the head with a growled expletive, then took off after the little brat.

There was an entire group of Mandalorians chasing the run-away cart.

“Use your jetpack and go grab him!” she demanded as she recognized the armorer Krae in her cyan armor.

“Not a chance in hell, the kid already threw me back once,” the woman answered breathlessly. Mars skidded over the ground at a turn, and hope surged as Grogu’s stolen ride bumped up against a barrel. It might be enough to stop him.

It wasn’t.

He took off just as another Mandalorian ahead of her came within arm’s reach of him, and she saw the motion as the man lifted his hand and began to rotate his wrist to cue a grappling line.

“Don’t!” she cried, and drew the weapon strapped to her back just as the line shot out. She swung the metal rod down, and felt dark satisfaction at her successful intervention as the metal cable whipped around it and skittered over the ground. Krae and the others rushed past. “Are you daft?” she demanded, and smacked him on the top of his helmet. “If you bring the kid back with so much as a bruise on him Din will have our heads!” she seethed, though she was quite determined to have  _ his _ head by the end of this.

“He’s going to get himself hurt one way or another!” the man protested, but Mars was already running past him.

This child.

If she had possessed any ideas about raising another kid of her own, Mars was absolutely certain she wanted nothing to do with babies or recalcitrant, rebellious toddlers. Maybe a nice, older Foundling who already had plenty of years of parenting under their belt. Someone who could help out with the work around the covert. That could be nice.

As she jumped over a fallen pile of poles and rounded a corner to find a path of flat vegetation knocked straight through her garden, Mars made a decision.

When Din Djarin showed up, she was going to give the man a piece of her mind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun Trivia: I have been dying for Grogu to have a chance to kick off with some childish antics this entire story. With Sarah constantly supervising him (and Din when she isn't able to), he really hasn't had much opportunity to get into mischief.
> 
> Poor Mars. She loves the little guy, but he's got that classic child grudge towards his unwanted babysitter.
> 
> Kudos to Numi for the idea of someone trying to use a grappling line to hook the hover-cart, and have someone else (who ended up being Mars herself) stopping him.
> 
> \---
> 
> Mando'a Translations:
> 
> Vheh'yaim - "Earth house" See chapter 9 for more info.
> 
> “Solus, t’ad, ehn, cuir, rayshe’a, resol, e’tad….” - Counting in Mando'a. 1,2,3... etc
> 
> Aran’adiik - My own mashed-together word for a Mando in charge of watching / instructing children. Literally translates as "Guard Child" (guard being the position). More contextually, it'd be understood as "Guardian of Children"
> 
> Osik - Mando swear word. "Shit"
> 
> Ruusaan - Fun tidbit! This was noted as being a 'common name' for Mandalorian daughters. It means "reliable one," and so I thought to include it as a little easter egg.
> 
> Skraan'Ikase - Literally "Small Eats" A Mando feast. See chapter 16 and it's notes for more.


	18. Skraan'ikase

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Updoot: Notes added at the bottom! <3
> 
> For those who read them: Check back later for notes on the story, because I'm squeaking this one out before I need to go take care of a pewter order ;P
> 
> I'll have them posted up sometime tonight. (CST timezone)

In the face of Mars’ impressively long account, which was entirely mortifying when it wasn’t simply concerning, Din Djarin stood his ground in utter silence, and let the woman upbraid him. He knew better than to interrupt.

“...disrupted language lessons, stole food from the feasting table when he was _supposed_ to be playing with the other children, wandered out of the watch of the chaperones countless times, and that doesn’t even _begin_ to cover when he caused an absolute uproar as he busted his way through half the covert on the firewood’s hover-wagon, and threw a _tantrum_ when he found your landing space devoid of ship!

“He would _not_ stop screaming and crying for _three full_ _hours_ and _I_ got saddled with him! And then all at once, poof!” she exclaimed breathlessly, and mimed a small explosion with her hands. “Nothing! Happy as a clam as if he hadn’t done a bloody thing, all happy gurgles and smiles again!”

As Mars paused to take breath from her long-winded monologue, Marrek leaned over into Din Djarin’s personal space to stage-whisper, “It was actually pretty funny; eight Mandos running after him between houses and not one of them could catch him, and Mars begged me to sing him lullabies. Didn’t work,” the bard added, amused, as he looked down at the child in question. Grogu had a decidedly mulish expression, ears drooped and eyes squinted.

Din was still reeling from the appalling report and his concern over the apparent medical crisis his Foundling had undergone, when Mars rounded on Marrek.

“And don’t you _dare_ even _think_ about concocting some ridiculous song about it, or I swear I’ll have you on laundry and garbage duty through the next two cycles, don’t tell me I won’t!”

“I’ll… talk to him,” Din said faintly as Marrek put his hands up in surrender.

“Talk to him!” Mars cried and threw her arms up. “You’d better do more than that, teach the little hellion! Never have I had a Foundling so bull-headed and incorrigible, and by the Gods I never will again,” she declared as she bristled. “I don’t care how cute he is, that child needs to be taught _manners,”_ she demanded, then crossed her arms and stared him down with palpable disapproval. That she was a full head and a half shorter than him somewhat ruined the effect.

Din swallowed thickly, and jostled Grogu in his arms when the child dared to growl at her. Though he fell silent, Mars had noticed; her eyes flashed with a militant gleam.

“You’re right, he needs to learn. I am sorry he caused trouble, I had… No idea he’d make himself such a handful,” Din began, and wondered how to phrase his explanation without sounding like he was making excuses. Normally he wouldn’t feel a need to explain in the first place, but Mars’ needed to know this if there was to be any hope at all of Grogu being allowed to continue lessons during the time they had left here, and the kid clearly needed it. “Mars, his most recent experiences involve being targeted by bounty hunters and Imps doing who-knows-what to him. He was held captive by bandits when I found him; I don’t think he’s had family to guide him for a long time. The kid hasn’t been with me longer than half a cycle,” he finished, and felt inadequate as he looked down at the Foundling in his arms. Grogu had been silent all through Mars’ account, and had a recalcitrant look to his eyes and a slumped posture.

Din felt that somehow, he should have been able to prevent this. If he’d been a better father figure, if he’d been more proactive - _something._

The woman planted fists on her hips and harrumphed.

“That would have been useful to know _before_ you dropped him off in my care. Magic hand tricks,” she said, and held her hands up to wiggle three fingers of each at him dramatically, “I can deal with. But a lack of parenting? I think his growth is stunted. No, I _know_ his educational growth is stunted, because he clearly understands what goes on around him enough to know how to make chaos out of it. He needs private tutoring before we let him loose with the other children. _Six_ instructors,” she reminded.

Din Djarin opened his mouth to negotiate and make that happen, and she talked right over him.

“And I want you to help in the kitchens - _both_ of you - to make up for the mess he caused. I am behind on my work by _hours_ because of your child, and it’s almost too late to catch up,” she finished, then folded her arms over her chest, and silently dared either man to refuse.

Well. That was convenient.

As Din struggled to find words, Marrek tried to keep a straight face, and failed.

 _“What?”_ the woman demanded, incensed.

“I came to cook,” Din explained. Simple was often best.

“I came to watch and amuse myself, but you’ve twisted my arm,” Marrek added.

Mars harrumphed at them both, and with the expression she wore, Din half expected her to grab the bard by an ear to drag him with. Instead, she only turned on a heel then struck off into the crowd, and he moved to follow. It was easy to keep pace with her, as she took at least two steps to his every one.

“Marrek!” Mars barked.

“Yes ma’am?” he answered cheekily.

“Don’t _ma’am_ me,” she quipped. “You’re on dish duty. Patri, go help Shar and Sokh with arrangements,” she ordered, and an elder woman in gray armor immediately peeled away from the sinks she’d been working at.

Marrek groaned, but obediently pulled his gloves off to stuff in his belt as he replaced her. Mars rounded on Din.

“What do _you_ know of cooking?” she demanded.

As he calmly explained, her heated expression slowly ebbed into shock, then delight.

~*~

“I wasn’t able to confirm the species, no,” Sarah said over the bile in her throat at the memory of the horrifically mutated figures she’d witnessed in Moff Gideon’s lab. She sat outside with the others of the mission, situated at the edge of the covert, and well away from the hussle and bussle of feast preparations. On the dirt ground she’d drawn a rough map of what she remembered of the inner facilities, and had used it to illustrate her trip through the laboratory.

“It’s probably safe to assume they’re human, though we’ll want to get confirmation on that,” Sabine remarked with a grim expression.

“Any news from our contact on the intel tap?” Afera asked roughly. He looked worn and tired, almost sleepy, as he rubbed at the side of his head with one gloved hand. 

“Won’t know for at least a week,” Luek supplied. “They’re being cautious.”

“The Imps are going to pull video feed. They might figure out Sabine was with me and trace her to the terminal,” Sarah added. She hadn’t actually _seen_ any cameras, but she remembered the look on the Imperial officer’s face as he watched footage from the chamber she’d been locked in.

“They won’t have a scan of my face if the data stick did it’s job right, but they could recognize who I am if they caught me on surveillance,” Sabine said with a grimace.

“Either way, by the time they’ve sorted it out, _if_ they do, we’ll be long gone,” Luek asserted.

“Changing camp?” Sarah guessed. It had briefly come up in earlier conversation, though she hadn’t been certain if she’d understood right.

“Absolutely. Better safe than sorry where Gideon’s concerned, and we’ve been here long enough. In a week’s time, this entire campground will be back to what it was before we arrived. In the small chance their scouts actually find it, the trail will be long dead. It could take them weeks or months before they get here, unless they hit a stroke of ridiculously dumb luck,” Luek explained.

It made sense, and in a way, it granted Sarah a measure of relief. The worry of an attack on the covert itself had weighed in the back of her mind from the moment she’d outed herself as an imposter.

She didn’t ask where they intended to go, and instead wondered in silence what her next move would be, because she knew her little family wouldn’t be going with them.

“What bothers me is how easily we got away, all things considered,” Soren said into the stretching silence. “Do they really want you alive bad enough to let us run free and clear? We didn’t even get hassled by a patrol on the outskirts to get to the pick-up; they called their troops _back_ , and they had plenty of firepower on the cliffs to take on the Razor Crest.”

“They do,” Dakara asserted with confidence. “Ask Luek or Din - they had eyes on the fight in the skies, too. There’s no way she’d have lasted otherwise, and they were trying to rope her ship, not blast it.”

“It’s not like the wretch to accept complete failure when he could settle for just ending the matter, even when it’d be a short term gain and a long term loss,” Afera growled. Sarah worked her jaw, keenly aware of the ache caused by the injury under her chin. “He’s proven that time and time again.”

“If it’s that uncharacteristic, then it’s probably my fault,” Sarah speculated softly, and her gaze grew unfocused as she remembered the smothering weight of Gideon’s fixation. She’d told the group that she’d mind-tricked him into letting the medics and herself escape, but perhaps she’d not told them in enough detail.

It was difficult to do.

“Your illusions last that long?” Dakara questioned skeptically.

Sarah shook her head.

“No, it’s not like that; it wasn’t really an… illusion. I altered his thoughts, how he felt about me in that instant; It only affects the moment. But when that’s what you remember, and what you drive yourself forward from? It’s more like it ripples out,” she explained. She was half-guessing, but it felt like the right answer.

She trusted her intuition.

“Sabine?” a low, masculine voice interrupted, and seven heads turned to look at an approaching Mandalorian. He wore the heaviest looking set of armor Sarah had yet to see, with thick, body-covering plates of deep green embellished by brown accents. Two boxy radios hung off his hip, and Sarah was pretty sure his backpack was actually an oversized tool kit or maybe another communication’s device. He looked more like a walking technician droid than a living, breathing person.

In his gray-gloved hands, he held a flat, unmarked metal case.

“Numi, yo. Is that what I think it is?” Sabine asked eagerly, her grim countenance brightened. Sarah was glad to leave the conversation behind.

“As promised,” the man answered as he drew near their circle, and tossed the box across the circle at her. Sarah ducked on reflex, just to be sure it didn’t hit her head.

 _“Vor entye!”_ Sabine enthused as she caught it. “Come by my place later tonight, after the feast, and we’ll settle up.”

“No prob.” He gave a lazy salute, and left the way he’d come.

“New gadgets?” Kicker asked. Sabine winked.

“Yep. I’ve got a friend who needs to stay in touch. Sarah - catch.”

Sarah quickly jerked out of her tired slouch to catch the box as it was chucked at her. At first she wasn’t sure if she was supposed to open it now, or wait; Sabine’s eager expression and Afera’s unexpected twitch of the lips told her this interruption was fine.

Curiosity piqued, she unlatched the thing and lifted the hinged lid, queerly reminded of the time the Tuskens had gifted her the lightsaber.

She really needed to get around to working on that.

Inside was a set of three identical, silver cylinders, nested into shaped black foam. She figured they must be some sort of communication’s device, but just in case, she was careful as she lifted one of the things out to examine it.

“Those have an encrypted frequency built in. Only thing it’ll connect to is their sister comms. One for you, one for Din, a spare… And one for me,” Sabine said, as she pulled her own out of a pocket to wiggle in the air. “Afera’s idea, as it happens,” she added. The elder huffed gruffly and leaned back on his palms.

“If we’re done here, I’m going to go get some rack,” Soren interrupted.

“What? Dinner’s in like half an hour,” Kicker protested.

“And I know you’ll save me something good. I’m beat - you didn’t have to stay up all night before we left taking care of a kid’s concussion. We good here?” he prompted, and looked to Afera.

“Go get some rest. We’re done here,” he confirmed.

“Take care, Soren,” Sarah said, and offered him a friendly wave as he donned his helmet and stood. Other farewells were given, and she wasn’t surprised to see their small group swiftly dwindle until it was just Sabine, Afera, and herself sitting on the cool ground.

Afera stared down at the map drawn in the dirt, then pushed himself forward and swiped a hand through it.

“How’s the arm?” he asked gruffly, and Sarah blinked, then smiled. She had a feeling he was losing his tough feelings towards her.

“Fine,” she answered. It was sore with a dull, throbbing ache, but nothing compared to the pain it’d been before Soren had treated it.

“Good. I can break it fresh the next time you burst my eardrums with comm squelch,” he growled, and Sarah quickly rethought her opinion on her name in his grudge book.

Sabine laughed.

“Wow. You go toe-to-toe with Moff Gideon without batting an eye, but Afera’s attitude makes you look like you sucked on a rotten egg?”

“An angry Mandalorian is _way_ scarier than a half-mad Moff,” Sarah protested, only half joking. She was both amused and relieved when a half-smile formed on the elder’s thin lips.

“You’re alright, for a rookie,” he declared gruffly, then stood. “I hope to see you again.” He donned his helmet, then looked at her for several moments. Sarah held her tongue on a reply; the shift of his posture and a sudden air of anticipation suggested he had more to say.

“Sarah,” he acknowledged with a single nod, then turned and struck off as she called a belated goodbye, startled at his use of her name.

She’d almost forgotten about his refusal to use it, and she felt rather unbalanced by the warmth that flooded her chest in response.

“Looks like someone’s made another new friend. So, ready to eat?” Sabine prompted, and Sarah immediately didn’t trust the impish look in the woman’s eyes, or the mischievous smile on her face.

“...I suppose,” she answered carefully, and closed up the box on her lap. It had a small carrying strap, and she loosened the buckle to sling it over her shoulder like a satchel.

“You’ll love it,” Sabine assured.

~*~

“Wow,” Sarah breathed, and came to a stop to admire the sight before her. The kitchens had been turned into what looked like a massive buffet, with tables ringed around the entire building. Every inch of tablespace was occupied with platters of delectable looking snacks, from crackers and thin meat and cheese slices, to more elaborate, fancy looking food.

She’d wondered if there would be any sort of ceremony to the feast, but it seemed the only festivity was the meal itself. Mandalorians collected an assortment of food on their plates, and she noticed most took only one or two pieces from any single dish, which left plenty behind for others to enjoy.

Not a buffet, she decided. It was more like a fancy potluck.

Braziers holding cozy fires ringed the space around them at regular intervals, to illuminate the area and keep away the immediate chill. The sun had not yet set, and it would be at least another hour before the temperature really began to drop.

“I’d say I know exactly how you feel, but I grew up with this, so I don’t really remember what my first one was like,” Sabine revealed. Sarah was pleasantly startled when the woman put an arm over her shoulders, and let herself be guided forward into the crowd. The air was thick with pleasant energy and people’s good moods, though she also felt a strain of urgency and anxiety that tainted the atmosphere. As a harried-looking cook rushed past them with a laden tray to replace empty dishes on the tables, she thought she knew why. “Now, where’d those two lunatics get off to?” Sabine mused, and both women looked around.

~*~

Marrek stood side by side with Din Djarin at one of the kitchen counters, each silent in their focus as they put the final touches on a tray of small sandwich bites. Marrek had drizzled a delicate, zig-zagging trail of brilliant orange sauce over the entire thing, while Din had been busy sprinkling a pinch of lightly ground white cheese on top of each.

To his immediate left on the countertop, Grogu sat and played with the leftover sauce like it was fingerpaint, and smeared his hand over the white cutting board Marrek had sacrificed to keep the child occupied.

It hadn’t taken long for Mars to give them free reign in the kitchen once they’d help her catch up on her own workload, and Marrek had to admit, he’d rather enjoyed it.

He loved a guy who knew how to cook.

“Yo! Kicker, how’s it going?” he greeted, as the muscular Twi’lek showed up across the counter from them, helmetless and grinning broadly.

“Starved,” he answered, then reached for the platter. Marrek grinned as Din’s hand flashed out and grabbed the guy’s wrist.

“It’s not ready yet,” Din informed him gravely, then slowly let go.

“Aw come on, these are my favorite! And I don’t care if they don’t have the pepper bits on top yet.”

“Psh, there’s another tray out on the tables already, unless you already ate them all,” Marrek revealed, amused.

“Really?” Kicker asked, brightening. “Where?”

“North side, green table,” Din answered shortly, already engrossed back in his task.

Marrek wiped his hands off on a towel, and scanned the crowd. If Kicker was here, he had to assume the debriefing was over.

“Sweet, keep ‘em coming,” Kicker replied, then hurried off.

A few minutes later, Marrek passed the completed tray off to Shar for her to bring it out. As he reached for an empty platter on the raised shelf in front of him, he finally saw what he’d been waiting for.

“Hey,” Marrek said, and knocked a fist against Din’s shoulder. The man looked up from washing his hands then followed his gaze, and Marrek was amused to see him straighten. “Dude, you look like a hopeful puppy, and that’s _not_ a phrase I’d ever thought to associate with your stoic ass.”

The helmet swung his way, and Marrek entreated him to his trademark grin.

“Take over,” Din ordered brusquely, then thrust the hand-towel at him as he stepped past to scoop up his Foundling.

“Wha-- hey! There’s a whole ‘nother plate to-- HEY!” Alarmed, Marrek turned to take off after the Mandalorian, only to be stopped when someone grabbed his ear. He twisted to counter, and stopped his elbow mid-strike as he recognized who it was. Mars was the culprit, and she managed to stare him down despite her significant height disadvantage, with a raised brow and a challenge in her eyes.

He _hated_ that look on women.

“What are you grabbing _me_ for?” Marrek protested. “That lunk just walked off in the middle of work! I was going to go get him!”

“That fine young man didn’t complain about one lick about any of the work I dumped on him, and _he_ didn’t burn the crepes. You stay,” she ordered.

“But--!”

_“Stay.”_

~*~

Sarah was distracted admiring a particularly lovely platter of fist-sized, hard boiled eggs. Each was cut in half like an edible bowl, stuffed with some kind of sweet-smelling, meaty filling, and garnished with a bright green sprig of an unfamiliar, spindly herb. Sabine held a large sheet of scrap metal with two plates on it, and had eagerly pointed out her favorites and suggestions while Sarah loaded their platters up.

She hadn’t been able to spot Din or Grogu, but her newly won friend assured her they would find them eventually.

“Ooooh - grab one of those for each of us,” Sabine said, and pointed to a tray of stick-like crackers, each decorated with a strip of pale green cheese flecked in blue. In the center of each was a dollop of grainy red paste, sprinkled with delicate flakes of glittering white salt. “Oh man, I love these things,” Sabine gushed as Sarah dutifully added them to their growing collection.

As she turned back to the table to fetch one of the eggs she’d been eying, a large hand settled on her hip, just below her belt.

Badly startled, Sarah whirled with her fist raise to punch whoever was dumb enough to grab her, and only stopped because she recognized the calm, pleasant aura that surrounded her right before her eyes actually registered the sight of him.

“Din!” she cried, surprised and delighted. She dropped her gaze as she loosened her fist, and smiled at the child he carried in the crook of one arm. “--What on earth _happened_ to you, Grogu?” she wondered, then grabbed the edge of her clanmate’s cloak.

Sabine laughed as she watched Sarah use it to wipe down the child’s orange-smeared face and sticky fingers. It was a little awkward to do it left-handed, as she’d taken Soren’s advice seriously and kept her healing arm in its sling.

Din sighed at her, but didn’t protest.

“Kid played with the sauce; had to keep him busy while we worked. I see you’ve found the food,” he added, and Sarah readily accepted her child into her arm as Din pushed him at her.

“Yep. So, what’d you make? We want to try it!” Sabine announced, and Sarah smiled as she watched him turn to the tables to look them over, then hastily followed after as he wove his way through the crowd with purpose.

“Marrek’s work,” he commented, as he ladled three modest scoops of casserole into small cups set beside the larger dish, then added them to their tray.

“Ooooooh _tiingilar!”_ Sabine enthused. Sarah assumed it was the name of the dish.

“My work,” Din announced a moment later, and added one little sandwich looking thing to Sabine’s plate, so marked by the woman herself sneaking a snack off of it to nibble on.

Before Sarah could be confused, she felt a little melty inside as Din picked up a fresh plate and added two pieces to it. As they made their way down the tables, she was convinced he was putting together a separate plate for the two of them and Grogu, as he didn’t add anything more to her first dish.

“Wait. Is that _chocolate?”_ Sarah asked as he added dainty truffles to their collection. They were at the final table, decorated with a dizzying array of deserts and beverage dispensers at the far end.

“It is,” he confirmed, even as he added a few more specially-curated items to their plates.

“Did you make these?” she wondered, awed.

“I did. Marrek helped with this one, he made the glaze,” he explained as he added a set of the thinnest cake wedges she had ever seen, each topped with a daintily arranged selection of sliced fruit. The brilliant oranges, reds, and a strikingly bright blue were beautiful against the rich dark brown.

“If I wasn’t already in love with you, I think this just sealed the deal,” Sarah gushed before she even registered what she was saying.

“Awwww,” Sabine cooed, even as Sarah felt the immediate shift in the air around her. Grogu made a happy warbling noise, but Din Djarin had gone ram-rod straight.

If it weren’t for the fact she could feel the intangible, dazzling energy that blossomed around his person like a warm hug, Sarah would have worried she’d upset him by his stiff, uncomfortable-looking posture.

She blushed all the way to her toes, and quickly dropped her gaze to the child in her arm as she pretended to fuss over him.

“...Maybe wait to tell me that until you’ve actually tried it,” Din said finally, his voice cracking mid-sentence. Sarah cleared her throat, then peeked up at him, and smiled shyly.

“Your cooking can’t be _that_ bad. This looks delicious.”

She turned at Sabine’s snicker, and raised an eyebrow. The woman waved her off, then plopped a truffle in her mouth and rolled her eyes in bliss.

“I don’t know about his cooking, but his baking is _definitely_ delicious.”

Feeling giddy, Sarah trailed after them both as Din collected a tray to set their plate on. He then added three cups to it, which he filled with a creamy looking beverage Sarah hoped wasn’t alcoholic. Since one of the cups was probably for Grogu, she had to assume it wasn’t. He offered one to Sabine, and she turned it down.

“Have you picked a spot to eat?” he asked, as he led them away from the press of people.

“Nope. I figured you guys were going to hole back up in your ship so you can be all mysterious and actually eat something, not just drool over it,” Sabine teased before Sarah could answer.

“...I’ll be fine,” he replied stiffly.

“Actually, I’d really like that,” Sarah admitted. She had spent the past few hours in intense conversation with not-quite-strangers, and after being surrounded by the churning crowd here and the accompanying mess of emotional leakage it held, she was ready to recharge in cozy almost-solitude.

A quiet family dinner sounded _wonderful._

“Whaaat? You two are no fun,” Marrek interjected as he joined them, and Sarah saw he held a tray with a plate and three cups on it. “I can’t convince you to stay for a song?”

“If it’s the one you threatened to sing, then no,” Din answered, and Sarah laughed as she adjusted Grogu in her arm, hefting him a little higher. Sabine quietly added Sarah’s first plate and their two bowls of _tiingilar_ to Din’s tray, then swapped a quick farewell before she melted away into the crowd.

Marrek sighed dramatically, but he was grinning.

“Well, fine. But here - Special compliments of Mars and I. This, for the scary scrap who stole a _Tie-Fighter_ and didn’t immediately _tell me_ about it,” he said as he set a short, brown cup on their tray, “And this for my new best friend in the kitchen.” He added another cup to their crowded platter, this one wide, tall, and made of dented metal. “Sorry kid, you have enough to fill your stomach already,” he added, and reached over to pat Grogu’s head.

Sarah smiled as her Foundling reached up with his hands to grab Marrek’s wrist with a happy warble.

“Thank you, Marrek,” Sarah answered with a smile, and noted Din was staring down at their tray, probably scrutinizing what the bard had placed there.

“Any time, enjoy your feast, you’ve earned it!” he said, then clapped them each on the shoulder. With a final wink, he vanished into the colorful chaos.

By the time they reached the ship, Sarah was more than ready to stuff her face and settle down for bed as soon as possible. The sun had only just dipped below the horizon, and stars began to twinkle in the dark, blue-dusted sky as night creeped into being.

Grogu waddled on the ground between them both; she’d set him down as soon as they were out of the busy areas of the covert so he could wear off some energy, and stretch his legs before the coming bedtime.

Instead of passing her the tray to hold so he could open the door, Sarah smiled as Din Djarin held his left arm out to her, and told her which button to press.

“How do you even remember what each of these do? Do you ever hit the wrong one?” she wondered.

“Practice, and rarely.”

She watched as the ramp lowered, and together they walked up.

“I guess we’ll see you in a bit, then,” she mused, as he set the platter down to close the entrance.

“I’d like to eat with you.”

Sarah did a fast double-take as her eyes widened.

“But…” She’d seen him slip food under his helmet before, but this wasn’t really the kind of meal he could tidily do that with unless he wanted to get sauce and crumbs all over his gear.

“It’s fine,” he assured, and she believed him.

As he sat down and began to take his boots off, Sarah realized just how much it meant to her to see him like this; comfortable, relaxed, and willing to strip away parts of the cold, invulnerable exterior to let her see glimpses of the man beneath.

Grogu didn’t seem surprised by it as he waddled over to pull himself up onto a crate, and she wondered if this had been regular for them before she’d joined on.

She considered, then followed suit as she brought herself down to stockinged feet, then set her footwear and the comm-link case beside her storage crate. She padded silently across the floor and picked up the tray, set it down on a box, then stepped over it and onto her blankets. Grogu waddled over to the plate.

She was rather surprised the child didn’t simply start grabbing at food, and instead plopped down to sit and watch Din with a patient eagerness.

When he joined them, Sarah was pleased to find him seated right next to her.

“So, what all is everything?” she eagerly questioned, and eyed the colorful spread with a watering mouth. She was famished, and the scent of food had been a torment since the moment she’d come close enough to the kitchens to smell it.

“Save this for last,” he instructed, and moved the cups of the mysterious, creamy beverage away from the two plates. “And we’ll start with these, because I don’t trust Marrek not to put something in our drinks we’ll want to erase the taste of.”

Sarah laughed as he picked up his silver cup.

“A toast?” she asked, and collected her little brown one. She sniffed experimentally, but all she could tell was that it had a sweet aroma, and the definitive tang of alcohol. “Smells fine to me,” she said with a shrug. Din Djarin was silent for several moments, and she relaxed in the calm, comfortable atmosphere of his pleasant mood.

 _“At allit, haat, ijaa, haa’it,”_ he recited, the words of _Mando’a_ a pleasant surprise as he lifted his cup to her. Sarah clinked her’s against it.

“What’s that mean?” she asked. “I recognize _aliit_.”

“To our family; honor, truth, and vision,” he explained, then reached up and carefully slipped his helmet up, wide hand covering the majority of skin that peeked out. Sarah belatedly followed suit to drink as Grogu watched them both curiously.

The wash of liquid over her tongue was pleasant - sweet and strong, some kind of dark ale with a strong alcoholic burn that tingled down her throat.

She nearly spluttered her own drink when Din Djarin made a comical coughing, gagging noise as he tried to swallow, then spewed his into the air in front of him. He slammed the cup down as he beat a fist against his chest and coughed. His helmet had fallen down crooked, and she could see the tiniest sliver of his chin stick out from the bottom as it probably caught up on his nose.

“Are... You alright?” she asked, torn between concern and amusement, and reached over to straighten his headcover. She cast a glance to Grogu, somewhat wary, but the child only watched with wide eyes.

 _“Bas’pirun,”_ Din wheezed hoarsely, then gestured shakily at the farther cups he’d set aside. “Pass it.”

Sarah complied, bewildered, and watched as he tipped the entire thing back and desperately chugged down four big gulps. His Adam's apple visibly bobbed beneath the fabric collar of his uniform.

In his haste-driven carelessness, she caught a better peek at his jaw, scratchy with a light shadow of stubble, and it took her several guilty moments too long before she recalled herself and tore her gaze away.

“He’s a dead man,” Din rumbled, voice strained. _“Osik.”_

“What in the worlds did he give you?”

“Grog, really bad grog,” Din answered, and coughed once more. Sarah picked his cup up and sniffed carefully, then immediately recoiled at the stinging, repulsive odor. It wasn’t strong enough of a smell for it to waft around, but this close it was unmistakably disgusting.

It also smelled spicy, and that ticked off a little warning bell in her head.

“Well… I guess I didn’t piss him off, because mine tastes great. Care for a sip?” she offered with a grin, and he waved her offer aside.

Grogu made a frustrated whining sound, and Sarah looked down to see him make a very pointed gesture as he looked at them, then looked to the plate of food, then back to them.

“Here, eat this,” Din instructed, and pointed at one of the little sandwiches. For Sarah the thing was maybe one or two bites, but for Grogu it was the perfect sized meal as he excitedly picked it up with both hands, and chowed down.

“Let me grab you a towel,” Sarah offered, and got up to fetch a rag from the weapon’s closet. It wasn’t the cleanest, but it would have to do. Din didn’t complain as she took her seat beside him, and she politely averted her eyes as he turned away to wipe his mouth and helmet clean without removing it.

As Sarah scrutinized the platter of delicacies, she wondered.

She wondered about Sabine’s impishness, the beverage Din had set aside to follow their meal, and the tang of sharp flavors she could scent.

Deciding to be safe, she picked up the chocolate truffle Din had made, and took a moment to admire it before she popped it in her mouth.

She closed her eyes and moaned in delight as the thing melted on her tongue, a dark chocolate with an almost fruity taste to it, and a light, pleasant edge of spice she couldn’t quite place.

~*~

Mars had apparently found her way to get payback, because he didn’t believe for a second the bard had concocted the revoltingly spiced brew alone. His eyes watered as his nose, mouth, and upper throat burned with a scorching heat, strong even by Mandalorian standards, and it took him a moment to realize Sarah had finally started in on the food arranged before them.

“This is _delicious,”_ she moaned after she ate the first of her deserts, and Din Djarin was glad his helmet meant he didn’t have to keep a straight face.

Though if she was going to make noises like _that_ while eating, he might have to pull a blanket over his lap to preserve his dignity.

She picked up the wedge of cake next, and he shook his head, amused.

“Desert usually goes last,” he pointed out.

“Call me suspicious, but I swear Sabine had a sadistic look in her eyes as she picked out some of the food,” Sarah explained, and Din wondered if she had figured out the nature of their cuisine.

Either way, if she thought she was safe with the deserts, she’d be proven wrong in about a half minute when the heat kicked in.

He waited to ask to sit back-to-back so he could tip his helmet up to eat easily, because he wanted to see the look on her face. He remembered his first _Skraan’ikase._ His father had not warned him of Mandalorian fare, and he took a strange kind of nostalgic delight in continuing the tradition of minor hazing.

“...You’re being awfully quiet, and smug,” Sarah accused after she sucked her fingertips clean of chocolate crumbs from the dainty treat she’d devoured in three bites.

He couldn’t help it.

A silent laugh shook his chest, unavoidable and powerful, and he felt an unvoiced chuckle lodge painfully in his burned throat as he struggled to maintain his composure.

She had just eaten the spiciest confection he knew how to make. The sliced peppers arranged atop the cake were direct from Mars’ garden, and the woman knew how to grow good, hot produce.

Sarah’s brows furrowed as she watched him, and he saw the moment realization dawned on her expressive features.

Her cheeks flushed red as they puffed out, and then she was gasping for breath as she snatched at his cup of _bas’purin,_ the closest one to her, and chugged. He wasn’t surprised she’d made the connection - she was a clever thing.

He liked that about her.

“You _ass,”_ Sarah wheezed, and Din Djarin burst into quiet, mirthful laughter. He didn’t try to stop her as she reached up to smack him on the back of his head, and he reached over to put an arm around her shoulders.

Grogu burbled at them in confusion, and he only shook his head, robbed of speech.

“That celebration I promised for kicking Imperial butts? Canceled,” Sarah declared, and fanned a hand in front of her open mouth. It took him a moment to figure out what she was referring to, and though the mention of it stirred his blood, he was otherwise unfazed by her teasing threat.

If anything, it only made him laugh harder, and the joy and humor she brought out in him felt _good._

He almost wished the lights were out so he could bury his face in her short, ticklish hair, and instead he tightened his hold on her. It was almost good enough.

“We like our food hot and blistering,” he cheerfully revealed as he shoved the temptation off. “Especially the deserts. You’ll get used to it. The kid did,” he added with a glance to Grogu, who was over halfway through his sandwich.

Sarah fixed him with a scowl that didn’t quite reach her bright eyes, then deliberated over his cup in her hand before she finally drained the rest of it.

He was both delighted and impressed when she reached for the tray and picked up the next piece.

“You are a _criminally_ good cook,” she complained. He only shook his head as he felt silent laughter shake his chest again, and gave her a one-armed squeeze before he let go of her. “Does Grogu actually brave the heat, or did you pick him out something kinder?”

“The kid already met the worst of peppers when he stayed with Mars. He ate most of everything we cooked, though I didn’t let him have any deserts.” Less because of the spice, and more because he had no desire to deal with a Force-sensitive child on a sugar-high.

“I hope you realize I’m only eating this because I am absolutely famished, and _maybe_ also because I love you just enough to eat your ridiculous food,” she groused, then popped another one of his creations in her mouth with watering eyes.

His throat constricted even as he opened his mouth to speak. What, he did not know, because he wasn’t sure how to answer her even though he felt a need to.

“...Too soon?” she nervously asked as the silence stretched on, and he cleared his throat under the weight of unexpected guilt.

“No. I…”

“You don’t have to say it,” she said gently, though the soft tone was rather marred by her wheezing, gasped breaths she kept taking to draw cool air through a mouth that no doubt burned.

He wanted to - and yet. The words got stuck on the tip of his tongue.

“Din. Relax. You don’t need to say it, because you’re really good at showing it,” she explained, and he closed his eyes as a pleasant, fuzzy feeling burned hot and bright in his chest. “Now… are you _actually_ going to eat, or did you just want to watch me suffer?”

He was glad for the change of topic, even if he still felt the discomfort from his inability to answer her as he felt would be proper.

Then again, everything about their evolving relationship had never been based off of what could be considered typical, or even proper by traditional standards. There had been no courtship, no discussion, and, he thought with chagrin, certain steps had been done out of order or skipped entirely, regarding her introduction into Mandalorian society. His adoption of her into his clan before she’d ever even intended to become a true Initiate came to mind, as did her current lack of education that he would make certain was remedied.

Just a steadily growing friendship he cherished, and a kiss in the dark fueled by mutual desire and a growing bond of trust.

Even if he didn’t understand it, and even if reason warred against his arguably reckless decision to pursue her, he couldn’t say he disliked it.

He felt at home with her, and he’d always been told home was where the heart was. He’d just never thought he’d find it so completely in a living person. Grogu had a place there, naturally in a much different way, and the bond of chosen family was a hard thing to assign reason to.

So, he stopped bothering to try.

“Turn sideways,” he directed as he scooted around to put his back to her. He didn’t bother to remove his backplate, as he figured the thick fabric of his cape would provide enough cushion for her to be comfortable as they lightly leaned back against each other.

“Go sit on the other side, kid,” he ordered gruffly as he caught Grogu peeking at him with open curiosity. It wasn’t the first time the child had tried to see what he could under the helmet, and Din had always been very careful around him.

On this, he knew he could trust Sarah - Grogu, he wasn’t so sure about. He had a feeling the kid didn’t quite understand, even though he’d once explained it in the vague hope he might.

After a moment, the child complied, and waddled over out of sight. Din rearranged food to claim one plate for himself, left the rest for Sarah and the Foundling, then settled it in his lap.

As he lifted his helmet halfway up his face and put the first bite of blisteringly hot _heturam’loras_ to his tongue, he finally figured out how to put to words the feeling of deep contentment he had been feeling of late.

Naturally, it was in _Mando’a._

 _Jatne Manda,_ a uniquely Mandalorian way of expressing the complexity of emotional fulfilment when one was at peace with their clan and their life.

As the rightness of it settled over his shoulders and he popped a chewy sandwich into his mouth, he thought maybe it wouldn’t be so hard to tell Sarah how he felt about her.

He’d just have to teach her the words first, so she would understand them when he finally did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun Trivia:
> 
> Originally, Sarah was going to be *completely* blind-sided by the spicy foods; unfortunately, she's too damn clever for her own good, and I figured she'd put two-and-two together and have some semblence of an idea... Though even still, she definitely wasn't prepared ;) the Mandalorian deserts aren't safe!
> 
> Why is Din a great cook? Because I kind of wanted him to have an 'unexpected' hobby, and the idea of a big bad warrior doing domestic things always entertains me. It also serves as a little peek at my planned backstory for his life before his covert went under-ground and they were cut-off from a large portion of the more... wholesome aspects of Mandalorian lifestyle in a covert.
> 
> Sarah's love confession? Wasn't planned AT ALL; I didn't think it'd even come up until well after [REDACTED] happened in plot first. It just kinda... happened. Which is exactly how I wanted it to in this story. And c'mon. Who doesn't love someone who can bake CHOCOLATE? It also works really well, because Sarah is the type to be fairly open and affectionate with those she accepts into her fold.
> 
> Din is as well, in his own way, but even then; he's a lot more laconic.
> 
> And awwww. Lookit dat little Foundling waiting to fill his tummy. Someone's starting to learn p a t i e n c e. Grogu learned his lesson! (now let's see how long that lasts)
> 
> Helmet: when my mom was beta-reading this chapter, she *totally* thought Sarah was finally going to see Din without a helmet on, and he was going to take it off to eat with his family, and she got all excited about it and demanded I tell her if it was going to happen. And I told her to just keep reading and find out.
> 
> It was too much fun to watch her suffer. I hope more of you got your hopes cruelly dashed.
> 
> #SlowBurnBestBurn
> 
> >:)  
> >:D
> 
> \---
> 
> Mando'a Translations:
> 
> Vor Entye - One of many ways to say "thank you." This one literally translates as "I accept a debt" - and MEANS it.
> 
> Tiingilar - A spicy cassrole dish, traditional Mandalorian cusine. I pulled this one right out of the lore on Wookiepedia. Marrek's specialty! ;D
> 
> "haat, ijaa, haa’it" - Honor, Truth, vision. This one has some fun lore noted in the dictionary I pulled it from, as "the words used to seal a pact." I didn't know about this at the time I wrote Sarah and Din's blood oath, or I would have had him use it then, so I'm glad I found an excuse for it to show up in this chapter ;) Seems fitting for a short, simple, meaningful toast!
> 
> Bas'purin - Another person of the fandom put together this word for "milk" in a dictionary they compiled, and I'm using it to mean a very *specific* kind of milky beverage. In this case, used to follow up the blisteringly hot dishes to spare the poor digestive track... because OOF boy even if it goes down well, just wait until it comes OUT! 'Purin' means water. Not sure where they pulled 'bas' from or if it is made up.
> 
> Osik - "Shit" (Mando'a swear word)
> 
> Grog - For those of you who either don't know wtf Grog us, or are like me and only knew it's *historical* definition (basically rum cut with water to thin it down), the more common use of it today means a REALLY REALLY REALLY REVOLTING BEVERAGE. Common in Military hazing. Kudos to Numi for the idea ;)
> 
> Skraan'ikase - "Small Eats" Mando feast. See Chapter 16's notes for more.
> 
> Heteram'loras - "Spicy Meat" a dish I made up for my take on Mandalorian lore. Din's specialty ;D think breaded meat skewer, then dipped in a blisteringly spicy sauce of deliciousness.


	19. A Step Behind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Boba Fett? Boba Fett where?!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one is a bit of a shortie compared to some of the other chapters... but fret not. Much more story content is coming in the future. Bottom notes have more deets on where I'm at in the writing phase.

One hour, thirty two minutes, and six seconds.

That was the exact amount of time it took until the  _ Slave 1 _ arrived within sight of their destination, and Boba had furiously sworn at the loud  _ beeps _ that alerted him to his quarry taking flight an hour in.

The beacon pings had remained active, tracking the Razor Crest’s movements. If he could just get there in time, he’d known he could catch up to them in the air. He had been hopeful.

At first.

Fifteen minutes ago, he lost transmission feed. The dials on his wrist were back to black, empty screens with an occasional green flicker.

It was  _ maddening. _

He had been chasing down the trail on his armor for years, always just a step behind. When he had finally found which group of Jawas had stolen it, he’d been furious to find it’d already been sold off. It had taken creative persuasion and a humiliating trade of his services to get them to tattle on who they’d packed it off with. Then it was another three months to track down just where Cobb Vanth lived, and he finally found his way to the obscure mining outpost of Mos Pelgo.

Just in time to see his inheritance offloaded onto a speeder bike with an unfamiliar Mandalorian, who shot off before Boba could have a chance to try and hail him. Boba’s ship had been parked well back and out of sight, and it had taken too long to run back to it for a vain attempt to give chase.

His cautious approach had cost him the trail, and he’d had to start again from scratch. Only this time, with the increasing fear over worry that his father’s armor would be melted down to be reforged. Every passing day increased the chances of failure, and he might never find it again.

“I’m taking us down,” he announced gruffly, as he dropped their elevation by a few hundred feet and they left cloudcover behind. Up ahead lay a sprawling, fortified position of some kind of industrial compound, and he banked low to keep out of immediate notice.

That was when he noticed the Imperial Cruiser hovering high in the atmosphere above it, and his sour mood turned black. Smoke drifted up into the sky from several crash-sites of downed Tie-Fighters scattered around the bare rock, and a large trail of thick, billowing smoke drifted up from the central bowl of the sheltered valley.

“You really want to get close to that mess?” Fennec asked.

He  _ really _ didn’t.

“We’ll scope out where they landed, then see about capturing one of the Imp’s patrols. I want to know what happened, and where they might be headed.”

“I’m really not feeling the Cruiser lurking above our heads,” his companion remarked dryly.

Boba shared her sentiments.

“We’ll be quick about it.”

~*~

Dirt crunched beneath Boba Fett’s boots as he prowled the perimeter of a clearing deep on the Eastern ridge, set far back into the untamed forest. Three deep, rectangular depressions marked where the Razor Crest had landed. Fennec confirmed that the trail was recent, and quickly going cold after she scanned the area with a scope-device that boasted a thermal-imaging display.

He stopped behind her shoulder to look down at the screen, and saw the multitude of footprints he’d already confirmed with his own eyes through more primitive means of tracking. They were the faintest of blue-gold smudges that marked a difference in ground temperature, and even as he watched, the lightest of them dimmed, then vanished entirely.

They had not missed them by long.

“Looks like they had a gunner and an aide posted on the cliff to the North, facing the complex. The other trail leads down to the canyon pass,” he reported, displeased.

At first, Boba had assumed there was only one person to chase down. Whoever the Mandalorian was, he traveled alone, or at least Boba’s contact on the man’s ship in Tatooine had confirmed the Razor Crest to be occupied only by the lone warrior.

Upon arriving at Trask and carefully inquiring around, Boba then gathered that the man had supposedly been hired as a bodyguard for a woman and her child, after playing taxi service for the passage of one Frohrk and her eggs.

He had eventually spoken to the frog lady herself, who offered a different assumption of the traveling companions’ dynamic - they were a family unit. Curiously, her description of the woman led Boba to believe she was not Mandalorian.

In either case, her story paired better with other rumors, which held that the warrior had gone back on a Bounty commission in a guild stationed on the planet Navarro, and Imperials had a price on the kid’s head large enough to make almost any head turn.

Boba knew well what lengths the best of Mandalorians would take to ensure the protection of their children, and it wouldn’t surprise him to find that the man had adopted the child in as a Foundling.

To which Boba grimly enthused that he now had valuable leverage against him, if push came to shove. He rather hoped it wouldn’t come to that likely happening, but he wasn’t willing to take chances.

“Now that’s convenient,” Fennec commented, jarring him from his thoughts. He lifted his eyes from the ground to look in the direction she now faced. The woods dropped down in a steep slope ahead of them. “Looks like they’ve finally found the landing space - Got someone coming our way... Don’t Imp scouts usually go in pairs?”

As she adjusted the dials on her scanning-scope device, Boba took a look at the monitor before he strolled past.

“They do. Stay here and keep watch, we leave after this,” he decided, then unhooked the strap that held his Gaderffii staff to his back; it was a long, metal rod with a bent end adorned in a flat, circular disc and a single spike. The other side was tipped with a deadly spear-point.

With its familiar weight resting solid and heavy in his hand, he entered the forest and vanished into the dappled shade.

~*~

Ruselm Derc was a young man at the ripe age of twenty, newly entered into his apprenticeship, and very glad to have found a well-paying job to support his aspirations to one day establish his own medical clinic.

Only, he hadn’t been prepared, not in the slightest, for just what it was he would find himself caught up in. Until today, he had never been inside the mysterious laboratory facilities of Warehouse two-eleven, and he had never expected to. His work was in the infirmaries, taking care of simple injuries and the occasional cold when one of the humans on staff took ill in the inclimate, ever-changing weather this wretched planet boasted.

He had never been so terrified in his life as he had been to walk through those haunting halls of dimly illuminated, foggy cylinders of blue bacta that contained living nightmares... Until that terror was immediately followed by facing his own death square in the face.

He could still hear the sound of the trigger as it clicked into primed position, and the creak of the Moff’s leather glove as he began to squeeze. He could still feel the blisteringly hot press of the blaster’s barrel digging deep into his throat, could still feel the sting of tears that had blurred his vision. His nose burned with the putrid scent of cooked flesh from those who had already been shot.

His escape had been pure, dumb luck; he was certain. He didn’t know who the woman was that had saved his life, the one who had put them all in danger in the first place; the traitor who had caught Moff Gideon’s ire. Because of her, the captain was dead, and so were many of the other friends and acquaintances he’d made in his time spent on the base. Yet, he couldn’t quite find it in himself to hate her as he wanted to. He couldn’t quite find it in himself to be grateful, either.

He’d gotten a good look at her face, and he remembered being startled to realize she was unfamiliar; he had met the six new officers of their new recruits a week ago. At least one of them was now dead.

At first, when he and the other medics had rushed out into the open air and scattered into the compound, he had thought perhaps the nightmare was over, and things could go back to normal. The Moff had his quarry, and Ruselm was a no-body, just a regular, simple employee with a clean track record.

Though the staff of the complex, humans and Quarren alike, had been openly confused and alarmed by their fleeing escape, it had not taken long for the dynamic to shift.

The Stormtroopers began to round his co-workers up, one by one. And it was perfectly acceptable to bring them back dead if they refused to go willingly.

Ruselm knew at least five others had gotten away into the canyon pass as he had. He also knew for certain that three of them didn’t make it; two of them, permanently.

He had heard the rumors of Moff Gideon’s violence; Ruselm hadn’t believed anyone could be that cruel. He had thought it was just propaganda spread by the New Republic and old soldiers too deep into their drinks to distinguish if the blame they laid was properly placed or not.

Now, Ruselm ran through the forest, uncertain of where he was heading, and only knew that to stop would be to die, and he’d rather take his chances out here in the wilderness and be eaten by some wild beast than be brought back to the hell he had escaped.

Only, his legs were tired, and his muscles burned. He wheezed for breath as he scrambled blindly up an increasingly steep hill. Trees crowded in around him in every direction, boasting birdsong as a mockingly cheery counterpoint to his panic.

His uniform was a mess, and he didn’t care, even when sharp brambles had snatched at his legs and tried to trip him, then ripped bloody cuts along his flesh as he broke free. Ruselm figured he would freeze, perhaps, when night fell.

It was still a preferable fate to being taken back. He would go anywhere but there. Anywhere at all.

A figure stepped out in front of him in the trees, cloaked in shadow, and Ruselm screamed in terror, certain he had been found, certain he was doomed. He let go of the sapling he’d been using to pull himself over a boulder, and fell backwards with a pained cry.

“Don’t take me back there, p-please, don’t take me back,” he begged as he desperately scrambled backwards over the ground, until he caught up against a large, gnarled tree trunk. Footsteps approached, as steady and sure as the death he knew awaited him, and Ruselm let out a choked sob as he turned his face away.

“J-just get it over with!” he cried.

He didn’t want to see the blaster rifle before it took his life, didn’t want to relive the terror Gideon had freshly instilled. He didn’t want to see that man ever again. He’d die before he did.

He hoped it would be quick.

“Not exactly what I expected,” a rough, gravelly voice commented in a conversational tone. It was familiar - Ruselm had heard it countless times from the remnants of Clonetroopers that still served the Empire.

He clenched his fists, and when the footsteps stopped in front of his feet, he felt a wet warmth soil his pants.

He was too terrified to feel properly humiliated. He just wanted the nightmare to be over.

“Now that’s just sad. Open your eyes, boy. I’m not here to kill you. Probably,” the trooper added, in a deceptively calm manner. As the first inkling of confusion began to bleed through Ruselm’s hysteria, he reluctantly complied.

He immediately recoiled from the ugly countenance that he faced, doubly shocked not to see a white helmet. The clone’s visage was entirely bald, without even eyebrows or lashes, and marred by thin scars across his scalp and parts of his face. The large nose had been broken very badly, or perhaps just multiple times, and his jaw was just slightly crooked enough to be a noticeable disfigurement. Dark eyes had an almost puffy look to the flesh around them.

After Ruselm’s surprise wore off, he realized belatedly that this stranger did not wear the armor of an Imperial soldier at all - he was garbed in layered black robes, with a thick, brown munitions belt about his waist.

This man wasn’t with the Empire, Ruselm was sure of it. Perhaps once - he was a clone, wasn’t he? - but apparently, not any longer.

“I won’t keep you long. Tell me what I need to know, and you can go,” the stranger offered.

Ruselm gaped at him.

The stranger waited patiently.

“I… Wh-what?” Ruselm asked, dumbfounded, and flinched when the man scowled.

“Answer my questions, and you can go,” the robed figure repeated. “Do you know where the Razor Crest is going? I know the ship was here.”

And like a man lost in a desert, Ruselm found his oasis.

“I saw the- the ship,” he began, and pulled himself up a bit from the rough bark that dug into his spine. “I’ll tell you anything you want, anything at all, but first you have to take me with you,” he bartered, grasping at hope. “I- I can’t go back there, M-Moff… Moff Gideon will kill me!”

He  _ had _ seen the ship the stranger asked about, flying overhead as the tie-fighters whistled through the skies. He had been on the cliffs at the time, and had been terrified they would spot him. He even remembered hearing the recalled patrols in the pass talking about it as they made their way back to help round up other escaped personnel.

He thought desperately that he’d have to string out what scant information he had, just to be sure this man had a reason to keep him alive long enough to get him out of here.

The stranger eyed him hard, then abruptly reached out and fisted a gloved hand in Ruselm’s shirt, and roughly hauled him to his feet. Ruselm whimpered, prepared to be struck, but instead he only found himself being dragged forward a few steps before the man released him.

“Follow me,” the stranger ordered gruffly, and Ruselm rushed to stumble after.

“Th-thank you… Thank you! You - You won’t regret it, I swear, I can - I can pay you, too. I have credits. You have a ship, right? We’ll leave here? Where are we going?”

“No questions,” was the curt response.

Ruselm shut his mouth, and followed the man in silence.

~*~

“He’s coming with us,” Boba Fett announced flatly as he entered the clearing with an Imp in tow, and Fennec lowered her rifle a fraction of an inch as she took in the sight of the man.

No, not a man, she decided; not with his youthful face, the ugly tear tracks that marred it, or the large wet spot that stained the crotch of his pants, a darker shade of black. He might be an adult, but he wasn’t yet a man.

“Where’s he sitting?” Fennec asked as they turned towards the woods and cut Southeast for where they’d parked the ship, behind jutting rocks of mountainous foothills. She rather hoped the boy would be put in one of the immobilizing prisoner cages on board - she had no desire to sit next to him on the flight. He was going to stink.

“Passenger seat,” Boba clarified. Fennec resisted the urge to sigh audibly.

“What’s your name?” she questioned as she fell into step behind Boba, next to the stranger, and kept a watchful eye both on their surroundings and on their new acquisition.

“R-Ruselm, miss,” he stammered, with an unexpectedly deep voice. Fennec snorted.

“You’re not a scout,” she observed as they ducked beneath a hanging vine, hung heavy and thick with layers of lichen. It hit Ruselm in the face, and left behind small flakes of pale green and dusty white on his uniform.

“N-no, miss. I’m a - I was - a medical officer. Infirmary,” he clarified.

Fennec was already tired of his nervous stuttering.

“And what brings you all the way out here?” she wondered.

“Moff G-Gideon was going to kill us, miss. I ran.”

“Stop calling me miss.” Up ahead, Boba chuckled softly.

“Sorry, mi--” he snapped his jaw shut with an audible click as color bloomed high on his cheeks. Fennec resisted the urge to roll her eyes, and instead just sighed through her nose.

It was going to be a long flight.

They fell into silence that lasted the rest of the hike. When Boba stopped to open the back door of the ship, he gave his next order without turning around to look at them.

“Check him.”

Ruselm spluttered in alarm as Fennec pivoted sharply on one heel, then advanced on him as she slung her gun across her back.

“Wh-what are you doing--?!” he cried, hands held up as if in surrender.

“Shut up and hold still,” she commanded, and proceeded to thoroughly pat him down. She removed his utility belt and slung it over her shoulder over his protest, then ordered his boots off as she unhooked the multi-functional scanner from her hip. As he divested himself of footwear, she fiddled over the settings until she had it set to the sensors she wanted.

“Arms out, feet apart. Turn around slowly,” she commanded as he complied, his face pale with discomfort. A red line of light stretched over his body and flickered back and forth rapidly as he moved. “He’s clear,” Fennec announced, and shut the device off.

Ruselm began to put his boots back on, and eyed the belt over her shoulder as he spoke.

“Can I have--” Fennec didn’t let him finish the question.

“No.”

“It’s mine!” the boy protested, aghast.

“Prisoners don’t get personal effects,” Fennec retorted simply.

“I’m not a prisoner, I’m a guest,” the boy defended heatedly. “He promised!”

“I agreed to take you with; I never specified what as,” Boba cut in, and Fennec smirked.

“A-Are you going to kill me?” Ruselm questioned, his deep voice an octave higher. It cracked at the end.

“That remains to be seen,” Fennec answered into Boba Fett’s stretching silence. She jerked her head to direct Ruselm to enter the ship, and after a moment’s hesitation, he fearfully complied. “Strap in,” she directed.

He walked down the short, narrow hall of the Firespray’s middle tier floor. His head turned this way and that as he took in the multitude of dizzying parts and equipment on display inside the ship.

“What is this thing?” he wondered.

“A ship,” Fennec helpfully supplied. It was more fun than it should have been to taunt him.

“I can see that,” Ruselm answered sourly, and stopped in front of the pair of seats at the end. Fennec waited for him to pick one as Boba climbed up to the pilot’s chair in the command console above them. “Where are we going?”

“That’s what you’re going to tell us,” Boba answered. Fennec strapped herself in, then turned her head to stare at the boy.

If possible, his face had paled even more.

“I, uh--”

“I don’t think he knows,” Fennec guessed dryly. This wasn’t going to end well for the Imp.

Ruselm’s Adam’s apple bobbed wildly as he fidgeted in his seat, and looked at anywhere but her. The ship’s engines  _ whooshed _ to life, and she felt the lurch as it lifted off the ground and began to rotate.

“I-I don’t know where it went, only - Only I saw the ship, the - the Razor Crest, that’s the one you want, right?”

“Do you know  _ anything _ of use?” Boba demanded. Fennec waited until Ruselm looked her way, then let him see her tap her fingers against the barrel of her blaster. He squirmed in his harness.

“Y-yes! Aren’t… Aren’t you after the girl?” he asked, and looked confused.

Fennec kept a straight face even as she frowned internally.

“What  _ girl?” _ Boba growled with impatience.

“The… The one the Razor Crest flew off with.”

Fennec almost smiled at the frustrated growl of her boss. Almost.

“How about you tell us everything you know, and hope it’s enough to satisfy my curiosity?” she bartered, then casually adjusted the rifle in her lap.

Her prey gaped at her, and started talking.

“H-her name is Sarah, uh, from - uh, clan Slate-ool… olik? owllick?” he began, half hysterical.

_ “Slaat’ulik?” _ Boba questioned sharply. Fennec raised a brow. The word was entirely new to her.

“Yeah! That’s - Yeah. That’s what she said,” Ruselm confirmed as he sagged in his chair.

Boba Fett swore, and then Fennec heard a familiar beep.

“We have a heading,” he announced with grim eagerness. “Keep talking, boy.”

“Y-yes, sir!”

~*~

“No, no no no,  _ NO!”  _ Boba Fett growled, and smacked a fist against the wrist cuff he wore in frustration.

Fennec didn’t dare comment on her boss’s anger where she sat strapped into the passenger seat, but her urine-reeking companion didn’t seem to have a proper sense of self preservation.

“What’s wrong?” Ruselm wondered, eyes wide.

The stream of profanity that answered them was in at least five different languages, almost a new record.

_ “Osik, _ dank farrik!” Boba continued. “Blast this wretched thing, we’ve lost the transmission--”

Fennec sat up straighter in her seat as the ship bucked and rumbled around them, and sensor alarms beeped to life, a chaotic musical cacophony that was unpleasant on the ears.

“What’s going on?” she demanded, and clapped a hand harshly over Ruselm’s mouth when he would have spoken.

“I’m not sure, passive sensor systems are down. Radar’s jammed,” Boba announced acerbically.

Fennec darted her gaze to Ruselm as he spoke against her palm, and one of his hands tugged urgently on her wrist while the other gestured wildly in the air.

“Do you actually have something  _ useful _ to say?” she hissed.

He nodded emphatically, and she released him.

“It’s the ore in the mountain ranges,” he blurted. “This region is full of them. They mess with electronic signals. I’ve been studying the geographical history of the planet, it’s actually quite fascinat--”

Fennec clamped a hand back over his mouth.

“Boba,” she called, and relayed the relevant information.

“I’m taking us down,” he answered sourly.

~*~

The three of them stood inside the belly of the main floor level of  _ Slave 1 _ , and studied the holo-display map Fennec provided. Ruselm traced a finger through the air over ridged lines and blank spaces as he explained the rippling maze of mountainous terrain that harbored a volatile ore once used in the creation of jamming devices.

The practice had fallen out of use ages ago as more reliable, and less expensive, means were created to accomplish the same goal.

Boba wasn’t really interested in the history lesson.

“They were heading South-southeast at the final ping,” he rumbled, and scrutinized the vast expanse of land. It could take days, or weeks, to fly a once-over to be sure their quarry hadn’t landed in one of the flat plateaus surrounding the rocky formations.

And that was if they were even still on the planet, and hadn’t flown this way just to jam the homing beacon.

Had they caught on to the fact they were being tracked, or did they have a more permanent destination in mind? He had recognized their zig-zagging, winding course to be one meant to alleviate the risk of being followed, no doubt a precaution taken after the Razor Crest’s attack on the Imperial base.

A destination in mind, he decided. If their intention was only to flee from pursuit, they’d have left the atmosphere hours ago and entered hyper-space.

“We’ll continue on this longitude,” he announced, and pointed a gloved finger at the nearest line of mountains, then traced it upwards. They weren’t well represented; Ruselm had pointed out the planet’s maps had been partially hand-configured due to the inability to get accurate scans on portions of the terrain. “Then cut south-east, here, and begin a grid search,” he finished.

“Are we taking the Imp with us?” Fennec asked. Boba snorted.

“Yes.”

The defected medic hadn’t been as useful as Boba had hoped for, but the boy knew the planet better than they did, and he’d been able to supply them with scant details on his quarry.

The Imp would also be able to recognize the Mandalorian’s companion on sight, and mark her for Fennec as a target to secure during forced negotiations if the need arose.

He ignored the woman’s sigh.

The Imp stank, but Boba wasn’t willing to waste time letting him take a shower, which could only be done while the ship was in its horizontal orientation. Tonight would be soon enough, if they weren’t fortunate enough to find the Razor Crest before nightfall. He wasn’t feeling very optimistic.

“Strap in,” he ordered, and returned right back to the controls.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So first... let me tell you, I haven't been slacking on the story ;D  
> Chapter One is under a MAJOR re-write to make it so much better. A huge thank you to my awesome Aunt, who volunteered as an editor, and has been providing awesome grammatical corrections and great story suggestions.
> 
> Chapter twenty-two is currently being written when I'm not working on editing and re-write of the original few chapters. Some eleven pages of new content have been added to chapter One.
> 
> \---
> 
> FUN TRIVIA:
> 
> Angri Boba Fett is still my favorite thing. 11/10 adore his character. Even better with a reserved-sass Fennec. Also, I don't remember if I've mentioned this yet, but I have legitimately been woken up several times from DEAD. SLEEP. by thoughts of how Boba is feeling chasing his armor all over the galaxy and stewing about it.
> 
> The worst was when I got ripped from a very nice dream because the thought intruded of "wait why WOULDN'T Din Djarin just have the armor melted down when they get to [REDACTED]?" and I had to figure out a very good reason why that wouldn't happen and thusly avoid having to write a murderous Boba.
> 
> This is what I get for pissing him off in my story. Too bad, Boba. I get back at him by writing cute fluffy feels for Sarah and Din.
> 
> Poor Ruselm. He's a scaredy cat largely because I almost never write cowardly characters, so it was kind of fun to torment the poor boy.
> 
> Over the weekend I had the opportunity to start a blacksmithing apprenticeship, and WOOO was it fun! It's also equipped me with some great first-hand experience knowledge to make coming chapters easier to write with a sense of life to them... :eyes:
> 
> \---
> 
> Mando'a Translations:
> 
> Slaat'ulik - Why does Boba recognize this word, you ask, when he (probably) doesn't know Din Djarin is of clan Slaat'ulik? Because in my world, it's just the name of the Mudhorn animal Din's clan is named after, so I figured Boba would know it. See chapter 13's notes for more info on the word.


	20. Teardown

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A nice, long, fat chapter ;D
> 
> Enjoy!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ***If you haven't yet, go re-read chapter one!***
> 
> It's been completely reworked as of 01-12-2021, and went from like 8-10 however many pages it was to a tidy 34 pages of writing. (I thought it was forty lol, not quite ;D)

For the first time in over two weeks, Sarah wasn’t spending her morning preparing for a dangerous mission or being schooled on how to properly eat dirt.

She had been allowed to sleep in until the sun had fully cleared the top of the trees in the East, a luxury she deeply appreciated. Din had woken her up by settling a happy Grogu on her stomach, after a kick to her leg to be sure she wouldn’t startle.

Now she stood with them both on top of the Razor Crest, Grogu sitting between her and Din’s boots, and watched the sight of twelve small spacecraft lift into the air from seemingly nowhere. They had been hidden in the surrounding area, tucked into forest clearings or nestled directly into the jagged foothills.

A third of the Covert was already dismantled; large, flattened circles of dead grass speckled the entire encampment where the first of the  _ vheh’yaim _ had been taken down. In each spot lay piles of the leafy greenery that had served to form the domed shelters, awaiting disposal and otherwise keeping the area green-looking when viewed from above.

Most of the spacecraft that came to land around the edges of the nomadic village were unfamiliar to Sarah. After she’d voiced her curiosity, she listened quietly to Din Djarin as he explained each one, what their typical firepower capabilities were, and what could be expected for their maneuverability.

Important information to know, if they ever came across one piloted by an enemy.

“You don’t see many of those these days,” he remarked, and nodded at an oblong, sleek looking ship as it lowered to the ground not far from them. “Piper-AR, Sixth Generation.”

“If it’s as antique as yours,” Sarah guessed, “Then why did Sabine need your ship for the mission?”

“The New Republic has been tagging every ship they come across that isn’t yet registered. I haven’t been caught,” Din explained simply.

Sarah’s lips twitched with a smile.

“You’re a good pilot,” she opined.

He didn’t answer her, but she caught the subtle shift of his posture and the lightness in the air around him. He was definitely preening.

“Very fast, high maneuverability,” Din continued instead, and returned right back to the lesson at hand. “No good in an extended fight, unless they’ve customized the shield generators, which isn’t easily done on that class of ship.”

“Hey, lovebirds - Nice nest,” Marrek interrupted, and Sarah looked down to find him walking towards them, easily spotted against the wet ground in his brilliantly flamboyant armor.

The sight made her wonder what colors she would wear, when the time came. Sarah shoved the errant thought aside, and waved down at him.

“Morning, Marrek. Need something?” she called.

“Actually, yes!” he announced, then stepped up high and activated his jetpack. Sarah watched curiously as the bard lifted up and joined them on the roof. She had few experiences with jetpack flight, and it was interesting to get to see it in action  _ without _ being under the threat of enemy Tie-Fighters and a fall to the death. She didn’t count Din’s arrival in the rain back at the port town - she’d barely been able to see him through the downpour.

Marrek removed his helmet as he approached, boots echoing dully against the metal hull, then cocked a hip and rested it there under an arm as he grinned at them. “I wanted to make sure you three didn’t leave without a proper goodbye.”

“We’re staying to help pack up,” Din revealed, and Marrek’s eyebrows rose. Sarah’s smile softened.

“Really? Sweet! --ah, c’mon, kid. That’s too cute,” he broke off, and Sarah looked down to find Grogu had waddled over to his boot, and wrapped his arms around the bard’s leg in a hug. The child warbled up at him, and Marrek stooped to pick him up with a softened expression.

It was such a drastic difference from her first memories of his interactions with Grogu, and the welcomed change made Sarah’s heart melt.

People  _ could _ accept the unknown.

In this case, they could even hold and cuddle it and make an adorable fool of themselves doing so. Mandalorians fussing over children was perhaps one of Sarah’s new favorite things in life; there was something distinctly endearing in seeing hardened warriors show their soft side.

“Ack! Hey, don’t stick your finger up noses, gross,” Marrek protested as he jerked his face back. Grogu  _ raspberried _ at him, and Sarah hid a snort behind a hand.

“Don’t put your face so close to his. He doesn’t like it,” Din stated.

“Yeah, thanks for the warning,” Marrek drawled.

“I’m pretty sure I’m the only one he accepts nose-boops from,” Sarah admitted. Grogu turned to look at her, and his ears lifted. She laughed, then leaned forward and planted a kiss atop his head.

“Of course he likes  _ you. _ You’re pretty,” Marrek teased. Sarah huffed.

“Yo! Moff-killer, Din, ‘sup?” Kicker’s bright voice called out from below, and Sarah peered around with a grimace until she spotted the approaching Twi’lek. In short order, they had another guest on top of their ship.

_ “Please _ stop calling me that,” she urged in vain.

“Not a chance in hell, live with it, scrap,” he retorted and grinned, then punched her on the shoulder. Sarah snorted and accepted the friendly gesture, even if the Twi’lek hit hard enough to cause a bruise. “I came to warn you guys.”

The relaxed, pleasant atmosphere vanished in an instant. It was replaced by a cutting tension Sarah had grown all-too familiar with of late.

“About?” Din prompted.

“A few things. First - You know a guy in black robes? All scarred-face and stuff?” Kicker questioned.

“Probably not,” Din answered. “Who is it?”

“No idea, but apparently, he was asking around for you and your ship. Fest and Jahr just got back from scoping out the port towns; Imps already have tabs going out, on both of you and on defected medical officers. You’ve got one  _ hell _ of an impressive bounty on your head,” he added with obvious enthusiasm.

It took Sarah a moment to realize he was addressing  _ her, _ and she definitely didn’t share his sentiment.

“Do they have her face?” Din asked.

“Yep,” Kicker answered. “So be careful where you go - You’ll be recognized. No chaincode, so at least there’s that.”

“How high’s the bounty?” Marrek asked in a distracted, conversational tone, busy bouncing Grogu in his arms, much to the child’s delight. Sarah was glad the bard was keeping him distracted.

Kicker’s grin widened, and her stomach suddenly felt queasy.

“A  _ lot. _ And by a lot, I mean they’ve bumped Grogu’s to a hundred-and-fifty million credits, and you, Moff-killer, are sitting at a pretty two-mil,” the Twi’lek enthused.

Sarah blinked, dazed.

_ “Osik,” _ Marrek swore reverently. Like Kicker, he looked more impressed than alarmed, much to Sarah’s dismay. A bounty  _ wasn’t _ a good thing! “What about Din?”

“I’m pretty sure they think the armor he’s wearing is enough of a reward for whoever is dumb enough to try and catch him,” Kicker said with glee. “And they’re right, sick bastards.”

“What’s the bounty commission?” Din questioned. Sarah was glad he was asking for information, because she was still reeling too hard to even think of words to speak.

Two  _ million _ credits?

That wasn’t just a lot of money. That was a  _ ridiculous _ amount of money.

“Alive, quite explicitly… at least for her,” Kicker said, this time with the first semblance of proper severity crossing his expression as he then flicked a thumb at Grogu. “The kid’s bounty still says they’ll take proof of termination at a fifth the rate.”

Sarah barely noticed Din’s double-take or the fact she was wavering on her feet, until his hand pressed against her back to steady her.

“Hey,” he urged, and it successfully grabbed her attention. She felt lightheaded. “You’ll be fine. This isn’t anything new.”

Maybe not for him, but for her - it was.

Sarah had known in an abstract, distant sort of way just what danger her life was in when she agreed to join on to take care of Grogu - they’d certainly seen their share of danger, especially in the recent month, but it had never felt quite so… absolute.

It was different, somehow, to be only associated with those who had a bounty; namely, Grogu. She protected him, she cared for him; he was the target, and Din and herself were his best defense.

It was a little different to be in the spotlight herself.

And two million credits could sway even the most noble of individuals, if they had enough cause to weigh what they could do with that kind of funding versus the life of one woman. And with Grogu in her arms, that value nearly doubled.

Her life as she’d known it was officially over. Even though a part of Sarah recognized that it had been that way for some time, this evidence was too real, too fundamentally different from the normalcy she’d become accustomed to. It was no longer a private acknowledgement in her head, but public. And not just that, but no doubt soon to be  _ Galaxy-wide _ levels of public.

“Sarah.” Din’s voice broke into her thoughts. She jolted, then looked at him.

“Yes?” she asked, and cringed at the sound of her voice; it was an octave too high. She swallowed thickly. She needed to get it together.

“Nothing’s changed. You’ve been a target from the moment you met us,” Din pointed out.

“Actually, I’d say a  _ lot’s _ changed,” Marrek argued, and drew her gaze. Grogu was watching her with wide eyes, his ears cocked at slightly askew angles. “You’re not helpless prey anymore; you’re also the hunter,” the bard pointed out. Kicker laughed.

“I… Know, it’s just - It’s just a lot to take in,” Sarah admitted, and swallowed.

The hand at her back was a steady comfort, and she was glad Din kept it there.

“Yeah, well, almost every Mandalorian has a bounty from someone these days,” Kicker said with a shrug. “Most are smart enough not to try and take the idiots up on it. If they’re not after Beskar, they’re after fool’s credits. Me? New Republic would take my fat arse for a pretty fee of two-hundred thousand,” he said with a wink.

“What did you  _ do?” _ Sarah wondered.

“Nothing they didn’t deserve. Anyhow, I need to get back before--”

All of them looked down at the sound of a jetpack igniting, and Sarah watched in mild amusement as Soren took flight. The Razor Crest was getting crowded.

Din leaned over to address her quietly. “You  _ still  _ attract too much attention.”

Sarah couldn’t help it. A laugh tittered out of her mouth, and she felt just a little better.

“So this is where you got off to,” Soren greeted without preamble as he landed next to Kicker. “Going to leave me with all the work?”

“Nah man, I had to pass info on to these two lunatics,” Kicker defended. “You hear about our newbie’s bounty? I think we’re going to have to stop calling her a rookie.”

“I’m  _ definitely _ still a rookie!” Sarah protested in alarm. She had zero desire to be challenged as an ‘expert’ from someone looking to make a name for themselves, or be accused of overstepping her place.

“No, how much?” Soren asked, far too conversationally. Sarah groaned.

“Two million!” Marrek cheerfully supplied, then passed Grogu to her. She accepted, and awkwardly cradled him in her good arm. Soren’s helmet tipped her way as he whistled appreciatively.

_ “Nice.” _

“I hate you all,” Sarah groused.

“True Mandalorian words of love, right there,” Kicker teased.

“Careful, Din’ll put your eyes out if you stare too long,” Marrek joined in, and Sarah was perversely pleased by her partner’s beleaguered sigh. Finally, someone else to suffer with her.

“Wow, you guys have a party going and you didn’t invite me? Rude,” Sabine called.

“Maybe we should get off the ship,” Sarah suggested. Din sighed again.

“We’re going,” Soren interrupted. “Packing time. Come on,” he ordered with a smack to Kicker’s shoulder, just below the blue pauldron, then turned and lifted off into the air before the Twi’lek could reply.

“Ack, well - See you!” Kicker said with a wave.

_ “Ret’urcye mhi,” _ Sarah answered, a proper farewell. She  _ did _ hope they’d meet again.

“Hey, you’re learning!” He returned the sentiment, then followed after his friend with a loud whoosh of engines as the twin jets carried the cheery warrior off.

Sabine soon replaced them both, her expression hidden behind the vividly decorated maroon helmet and its dark visor.

“Hey, Sarah! Listen, we need to talk. I just spoke with Jahr, and he said--”

“She’s got a bounty on her head of two million credits?” Marrek interrupted.

_ “Osik, _ you beat me to it. Way to go for pissing off the Moff! Also, be careful,” Sabine added, more seriously. “Do you have a chaincode on record?”

“No,” Sarah confirmed with a grimace. Word was spreading fast.

“That’s good. You guys sure you don’t want to come with us? You’ll be safer with the covert,” Sabine urged.

“We have somewhere to go,” Din answered simply.

Sarah glanced at him, and resisted the temptation to ask where that would be. Though they had shared many secrets, directional information was still something she insisted on being kept out of the loop on. It was one thing for their position to be compromised, and another to have a need to go somewhere with a possible ambush ready to accept them. At least with the former, they could simply move on before their enemies got to where they were.

“Well, if you change your mind, you know how to get ahold of me,” Sabine assured.

“Thank you,” Din answered, almost gruffly.

“Any time. You’re being  _ awfully _ quiet. You alright?” Sabine wondered aloud, as her helmet swung Sarah’s way.

“She’s in sticker shock at her own price-tag,” Marrek supplied. “Which is funny, because she’s utterly invaluable.”

Sarah shifted her weight, somewhat uncomfortable. Marrek had a very flirty sense of humor, but sometimes, she couldn’t tell if he was actually being serious or not.

“Priceless,” Din agreed, catching her off guard. His hand slid from the small of her back to her waist, and he tugged her flush against his side. Grogu beeped happily, and settled down more comfortably into her arms as Sarah felt her face flush with warmth.

“Awww, you two are cute,” Sabine crooned with obvious amusement. “Well, I take it you heard about that guy asking around after you? It happened long before the Imp’s put out their bounty, which is why Jahr thought it could be important.”

“We heard,” Din confirmed. “Do you know anything more specific?”

“Bald, black robes, flies a weird ship with a dish bottom. Jahr’s never seen it before,” Sabine explained.

“What color?” Sarah prompted.

“Dunno, he didn’t say.”

“I’ll talk to him,” Din answered. “Where is he?”

“At the tavern helping pack up,” Sabine revealed. “If you’re off to do that - Sarah, mind giving us a hand in the kitchens? We could use an extra helper. Grogu can play with the kids outside, we’ve got a chaperone for them. Ignore Mars if she gives you the stink-eye.”

“Can do,” Sarah confirmed, then glanced at her partner. His dark visor swung her way, and Sarah felt her heart clench.

It didn’t hit her often, but right now, she really wished he didn’t have a helmet on. So she could meet his eyes properly, or give him a kiss on the cheek. Something -  _ anything. _

At least she knew their color, a precious secret she privately cherished. It helped.

“I’ll meet you there,” Din promised, then let her go to put a hand to her shoulder in parting.

“See you,” Sarah answered softly, and waved as he took flight.

“Weeeeell it’s been a nice chat, but I should get back to work,” Marrek interrupted. “Hey, how’d you get up here anyways, Sarah? Din carry you?”

“There’s a ladder to the top,” she explained, though she was starting to feel oddly singled-out. Not every Mandalorian had a jetpack, but enough of them did that it was starting to make her feel… Antsy? It was a strange feeling. She had never before felt any concern over being stuck to the ground on her own two feet, but watching her friends bounce around in the air made her wistfully wonder what it’d be like to fly.

“I’ll meet you at the bottom,” Sabine answered, and was off before Sarah could reply.

Marrek laughed.

“Your face is priceless. Give it a cycle or two and I’m sure you’ll have your own  _ sen’tra.  _ You’re going to breeze through the Rites at this rate, Moff-puncher. _ ” _

Sarah recognized that word, even without the context. Jetpack.

“I’m more worried about the helmet,” she admitted, and ignored the nickname.

“Oh?”

She immediately wished she’d kept her mouth shut. Sarah waved him off with a shooing motion, then turned away with Grogu to head back to the top hatch of the ship.

She was surprised when Marrek followed after, strolling casually alongside. They stopped in front of the access point, and Sarah looked down at the closed door. She didn’t see a way to open it from the outside.

“Totally saw that coming,” the bard revealed with a grin. “Want a lift?”

“No. Take Grogu, I’ll climb down,” she answered immediately, and planted a kiss on top of the child’s head as he made a curious, excited warble.

“Aww, heck yes. C’mere greenie,” Marrek cooed, and Sarah sucked in a breath.

It felt like so long ago that she’d once called her Foundling by that as a nickname. Had it really only been a matter of months? It felt like several cycles.

“You kind of need to let him go if I’m going to take him,” Marrek pointed out, and Sarah hastily loosened her hold so he could accept Grogu into his arms. “Meet you down there!”

And then the two of them were off.

Sarah carefully removed her arm from its sling as she walked to the nose of the ship, then hopped down onto the main body of the left repeating cannon’s setting. She knelt and grabbed the barrel with both hands, then swung herself off with most of her weight supported by her good arm, and dropped the some ten feet to the ground. Sarah landed in a crouch with a grunt, and immediately rolled to carry the momentum before she popped back up onto her feet.

She liked how mobile she was becoming. It was… empowering.

“You’re lucky Soren didn’t see that, or he’d have a fit,” Sabine half-joked as Sarah returned her splinted arm back into its cloth rest. It  _ felt _ completely fine.

“She hardly weighs a thing, I think that counts as light duty,” Marrek supplied, then transferred Grogu back to her. Sarah smiled.

“It’s healing well. So, kitchen duty?” she prompted, and waved to Marrek as he bid them farewell.

“Yep, let’s go,” Sabine agreed, then pivoted on a heel to lead the way.

~*~

“That’s all I can tell you I’m afraid, I didn’t speak to the guy myself. Sucker moves quick,” Jahr said over a large, wooden crate without a lid. As it was set on the bar counter and shoved his way, Din picked the thing up. “Back end of the hovercart, heavy stuff goes on the forward,” the bartender reminded.

Din nodded once, then made his way over to the transport in silence. It waited just outside the tavern steps, a few boxes and a roll of bundled hoses already stacked neatly on it.

Jahr had proven to be an easy person to get information out of, willing to talk so long as Din was willing to work, which he was.

He had always liked to keep moving, keep useful. Whether it was supporting the tribe with income from bounty commissions or getting his hands dirty in more mundane, physical labor, he welcomed the sense of purpose.

“You don’t need to stay, we can get it from here,” Jahr offered as Din returned to the counter.

“Hand me the next box,” Din answered, and waited patiently by the counter as he watched Jahr pack metal canisters into a chest with slotted compartments. He was a thin man, with long limbs and absurdly broad shoulders, and Din suspected Jahr had either been stunted in his growth during childhood, or was younger than his calm manner suggested.

The armor Jahr wore fit him well enough, a pale mint marked with cream lines in neat rows along the breastplate.

One for each time he’d broken up a brawl in the taverns, Jahr had cheerfully informed him when he caught Din looking.

There were a  _ lot _ of marks.

“Hey! Corr, where are you at with the frame?” Jahr called, still packing his crate.

“If you’re offering to send your handy helper my way, do it. I could use a hand getting the top posts down,” Corr called from the roof. Din looked up.

The ceiling was half dismantled, each layer of greenery and the few tarps they’d used to reinforce such a large building carefully peeled away row by row, and exposed the metal framework that supported it all.

Jahr gestured with a pointed finger to Din, then up.

He didn’t need to be told twice, and started walking for the wall to climb up.

“Just jetpack up, way faster,” Jahr interrupted.

Din grimaced. That was a disaster waiting to happen - he had improved in his use of the jetpack, but he didn’t trust his capabilities where landings were concerned. He wasn’t going to try landing on thin metal bars.

_ Especially _ not without a codpiece on.

“Chicken,” Jahr taunted as he kept walking.

Din stopped in his tracks.

~*~

Krae arrived at the tavern just in time to hear a round of good-natured laughter that followed a loud, wholloping  _ thunk  _ from inside. She could see her son Corr on the rooftop, peering down into the building, his light blue armor difficult to spot against the sky. A bundle of rope was slung around his shoulder where he’d been unbinding the thick green leaves.

“Come on, you dropped into a ship in  _ mid-flight _ through a tiny ass doorway with that thing, and you can’t land on a flat rod? Was Dakara pulling my leg?” Corr called.

“Let’s just say I didn’t exactly stick the landing,” a familiar voice groaned.

Beneath her helmet, Krae grinned.

“As I recall,” she began, as she entered the building and ducked beneath the load of wooden slats carried by another worker, “You stuck the landing hard enough to break bones.” She had been given the second-hand account from Afera and Sabine both.

The warrior she addressed was sprawled on the floor, shoved up onto his elbows, and somehow managed to look disheveled. The inscrutable Beskar helmet swung her way, and she folded her arms across her chest.

Din Djarin reminded Krae strongly of her youngest child, now deceased, both in build and in mannerism. She was privately glad his armor was of a significantly different make - otherwise, it might hurt more to look at him, more so than it already did to recognize the distinct craftsmanship of the familiar style.

“Do you all have nothing better to do than gossip?” Din asked dryly, and picked himself up off the ground.

“Oh, believe me, my hands have been kept busy at the forge. It leaves the ears open to listen. Now, what’s going on here?” she wondered, and shoved old memories aside.

“He’s trying to get on the roof,” Corr called from above.

“Great flier, sucks at the landings. One more fail, and I win forty credits,” Jahr boasted. He leaned against the counter, and Krae took note of who else was in the room with a hum. There were three other Mandalorians present, all of whom she recognized.

“I’ll take that bet,” she decided. “Din. Come here,” she commanded.

He went still from adjusting the sitting of his armor, and she arched a brow he couldn’t see as she waited.

After a moment, the warrior complied, and walked over to her.

Krae regarded him in silence for several moments. Straight posture, easy balance. Not too stiff, not too loose. Good.

She leaned forward, and lowered her voice so only he would hear.

“Ignite, thrust. Twenty feet up - stop and hover. Line yourself up, then cut it out in increments. That’ll get you close enough to drop the last few feet. If you start to wobble, don’t tense - relax into the motion. Let it happen,  _ then _ adjust. Flying is all about going with the motion, not forcing it.”

He didn’t answer her, but the silver helmet tipped slightly before Din turned and walked away, back to the open space of the room.

“Aww, come on, that’s cheating! Did you give him advice?” Jahr complained.

“You never specified terms,” Krae answered with a grin.

She watched as the young man shot up in a straight line, and hummed her approval. His form for take-off was good; he didn’t lean too far in any direction, and it gave him a clean, vertical ascent. Most fumbled during the moment of ignition, and took off at an angle.

Din went higher than she’d suggested, and whether it was intentional or not Krae couldn’t say, but he otherwise followed her instructions as he lowered down to the roof in short, hopping spurts.

“Bah!” Jahr cried as the man dropped the last few feet and landed on the cross-section of the top of the roof on the narrow, flat beams. Din wobbled precariously for a moment, then caught his balance and straightened.

Krae realized she was smirking as the shiny helmet tipped her way and nodded once. Satisfied, she returned the gesture.

“Pay up, barkeep,” Krae cheerfully ordered as she strolled over to him while the others returned to their work.

“Ack.” Jahr fetched his coin purse out of a hidden pocket, then sorted out the credits to herself and Ferris, an older man in maroon armor.

Krae jingled the little blocks of deep gray in her gloved hand, pleased, then pocketed them.

“When he’s done here, send him my way. We need to talk,” she informed the barkeep.

“Stay and lend a hand, and chat with him on break?” Jahr offered instead.

Krae considered. Afera was taking care of dismantling the frame of their shared  _ vheh’yaim; _ she had already packed up their belongings. She still needed to tend to the forge, but it would be a few hours before it was cool enough to safely pack away into its crate.

“Very well,” she decided. “What needs doing?”

Jahr pointed up to the roof, and she took off for it without another word.

~*~

“Can’t you just carry it with both hands?” Mars asked, exasperated. “That should be more than healed by now. This isn’t  _ that _ heavy.”

Sarah had been set to carrying the lightest of boxes, most of which were small enough she could carry one handed, or those that had a handle on the top she could heft them along by. She’d quickly run out of work to do, and she shared Mars’ aggravation over her one-armed limitations.

She  _ wanted _ to help.

And under the weight of Mars’ disapproving scowl, Sarah pulled her arm free of its sling, then reached for the long, rectangular chest that contained one of five portable stovetops, cleaned and folded up.

She jolted when a pair of gloved hands settled firmly on her shoulders, and an aura of protective menace bloomed around her.

“And just what do you think  _ you’re _ doing?” Soren asked. Sarah swallowed, then peeked up at him. He was significantly taller than both Din and herself, and she could see the tiniest peep of skin beneath his helmet from this angle.

“Uh…”

“Oh come  _ on, _ Soren,” Mars complained with a roll of eyes. “That arm is more than healed enough to--”

“Are you a medic?” the warrior interrupted archly. Mars shut her mouth with a click, then opened it.

“No, but--”

“Have you ever broken a bone, Mars?” Soren asked with deceptive calm.

“Countless times--”

“Your  _ own _ bones?” he clarified patiently. Sarah felt color rise high on her cheeks, her hands still settled on the corners of the box in front of her.

“Well, no,” Mars admitted.

“Then if I catch you trying to supersede my orders regarding the medical aftercare of  _ my _ patients, I’ll be happy to educate you first-hand on the pleasantries of what it feels like to break a bone, and then cause a fresh fracture the next day.  _ Are we clear?”  _ Soren growled, his calm voice finally breaking free into a dangerous rumble.

Sarah swallowed thickly, and Mars nodded, though she didn’t look pleased.

“You’re being a mother hen,” she quipped. “She’s not going to break her arm again just moving a few boxes around, but fine.”

“Careful, Mars,” Soren warned, his voice lowering. “And  _ you,” _ he continued, and Sarah let him turn her around by her good shoulder. “If I catch you giving in to someone else pressuring you, I’ll break it for you myself. Are we clear?”

“Crystal,” Sarah squeaked, eyes wide. She believed him. She  _ absolutely _ believed him.

Behind her, Mars huffed derisively, and Sarah felt an unexpected shame as she heard the woman hefted the stove up herself. She felt useless.

Soren snorted at her.

“Stop moping,” he admonished. “Teardown is always one step away from a bloody brawl, and Mars has a short temper on the best of days. Besides,” he added, then reached over to one of the other remaining boxes, then flipped it up on its side. “You can one-hand it. Here, try,” he offered, and shoved it over the table in front of her.

_ “Vor’e,” _ Sarah thanked him, and felt herself smile as the tension eased off. It was awkward, but her arm was  _ just _ long enough to fit over the side of the thing as she hefted it off the counter.

“Any time. I came to say goodbye - Kicker and I are setting out early, we have first recon,” Soren revealed. He picked up another stove and fell into step beside her as they carried them towards the ship parked just outside the kitchens. The dull gray shuttle took up a significant amount of space, and if the  _ vheh’yaim _ closest to it hadn’t already been dismantled, it wouldn’t have fit.

“Safe travels,” Sarah offered, and followed it with a proper goodbye in  _ Mando’a. _ Soren surprised her with a deep chuckle.

“No promises, but we’ll do our best. You take care. And keep training; I want to see you throw Marrek in the mud next time we meet.”

His matter-of-fact manner made Sarah’s smile stretch into a giddy grin. He really thought she could?

“Give Kicker a hug for me,” she teased as she passed the stovetop off to the green-helmeted woman that stood at the end of the ship, who directed those inside as they stacked and arranged the steady flow of goods. Soren followed suit, and they walked back towards the kitchens.

“You come from a huggy family? Didn’t take Din for the type,” Soren mused.

“I’ve only known him a few months,” Sarah reminded. “But I did, once upon a time. It’s nice to be with family again,” she said quietly.

“Orphan?” he guessed.

Sarah frowned, and looked down as she wove between people to get back to the remaining stovetops.

“...Not quite,” she admitted. “Let’s just say I haven’t seen them in a long time.”

Soren reached out and put a hand on her shoulder, and Sarah stopped, perplexed and wary. Between the helmet and her unwillingness to actively pry, she couldn’t place his mood, but there was a tension about his posture and a subtle density to the air around him that caught her off guard.

“We are your family now. You wear our clothes, you walk our path, and you are claimed by a Clan. It doesn’t mean you have to forget who you once were, but people  _ will _ challenge you over your decision. I still have a father outside the family, and a sister. They weren’t exactly thrilled when I left home,” he revealed, and Sarah worked her jaw.

She hadn’t expected their conversation to turn from a friendly goodbye into deep discussion, but she had to admit, it helped to know her situation wasn’t exactly unique. She’d been wondering about it, now and then.

“I’m glad we met,” Sarah said finally, unsure what else to say, and reached up to pat the hand on her shoulder. Soren nodded and withdrew, then she laughed as he reached out and hauled her into a hug, mindful of her splinted forearm. Her upper torso and shoulders, however, got mercilessly squeezed. “Can’t breathe!” Sarah wheezed.

“Take care, Moff-killer,” Soren teased with a wave as he turned to leave.

“Oh come on, stop calling me that! He’s not even dead yet!” Sarah protested.

“Make it true the next time you see the bastard,” Soren answered, entirely unswayed as he vanished into the crowd.

Sarah groaned, then awkwardly flipped the next of three remaining stove-tops onto its side, and got back to work.

~*~

The tavern roof was down, its metal frame disassembled into neat, tidy piles outside the stone foundation. Din thought longingly of returning to the Razor Crest so he could remove his helmet and wipe the sweat from his face, and stoutly ignored the Mandalorians around him who held no such reservations.

The cooling system built into his headcover helped, but it wasn’t enough to face the nearly four hours of hard, constant labor it had taken to dismantle the building.

He was ready for a break.

But first, he had business to attend to.

“You wanted to see me,” Din announced as he approached Krae. The woman’s bright cyan armor had a metallic sheen to the paintwork he’d not noticed before, and it glittered softly in the bright, early afternoon sun. She looked behind herself to see him from where she sat, resting on a box with a cup of water in her hand.

She was the only one around him that still wore her helmet.

“Yes. I’ve talked it over with the other women,” Krae began in a blunt tone, “As far as we’re concerned, Sarah’s passed her Rite of Combat. The mission may not have gone entirely as planned, but then again, they never do. Considering the unusual circumstances of her place, I thought it best to ask permission before we went ahead with cementing it; I know your traditions vary slightly from those present here,” she explained as she stood up, then loudly cracked her spine with two hands placed to the small of her back.

That Krae spoke so casually of a matter of great importance didn’t diminish what it was she brought up, and Din swallowed thickly.

It was an honor Sarah deserved, yet he wasn’t sure entirely what the armorer had in mind for officializing it. Din knew he had made several oversights in regards to Sarah’s induction into the tribe, but the presentation of armor wasn’t one he was willing to fudge on. Their next stop was going to be to find the Forgemaster he had grown up with, who was responsible for equipping initiates and veterans alike with their gear; not only did he have matters to speak with her on, but Din also wanted to introduce Sarah to her, and to any others who had survived the massacre of Navarro.

He didn’t want to take that right away from the Forgemaster, and he didn’t want to deny Sarah the honor she was being offered, an honor she had earned.

Before Din could voice his questions, Krae continued talking.

“There’s three choices; You can tell me to shove it and I’ll leave off, and you can do what your immediate family covert does with its Initiates. You can tell me to proceed as I’d  _ like _ to, and I’ll have her first breastplate ready by the time you two are ready to depart. I already have a few Durasteel blanks to work from, so it won’t take long to cold-fit it. Or,” she continued, and thumbed open a snap-closure of a pouch off her belt, “I can give her this, and you can see about having her fitted for her first piece of armor,” she offered.

Din looked down at the object in Krae’s hand as she held it up for him to inspect. Words lodged in his throat as he took in the sight of the center diamond for a Mandalorian breastplate. It fit neatly in the palm, a narrow, rectangular piece that was pointed on the top and bottom, with a deep-set well inlaid with black enameling. Set in the very center was a slender line of raised metal, and it was a striking contrast. The bright, silvery sheen of Beskar glinted in the sunlight, and he could see a glimpse of the electronics on the edges of the device.

It took him several moments too long to find an answer for her, and in the face of his stretching silence, Krae waited patiently.

“You may give her this,” Din said finally, voice rough. “I will present her to the Forgemaster of my covert.”

“Do you wish to be there for it?” Krae questioned. “As I understand things, she has no  _ buir _ to stand beside her.”

Din opened his mouth to answer her - and found he could not speak. Questions churned in his mind; was it appropriate for him to be present for the private ceremony? As with most Mandalorian traditions, he knew it would be short, and brief, but that didn’t negate the significance.

Din wanted to ask for Krae’s thoughts, for advice on how he should consider proceeding. Normally, the Mandalorian mother would stand beside her daughter to bear witness to the occasion. For the men, it was the father who stood in. Sarah had neither.

He wanted to ask someone of his own immediate family, because they understood the Creed he had grown up under the teachings of, understood the importance of its strict tradition.

Din knew there would be skepticism when he presented Sarah to the covert. He expected them to be hesitant to accept her, perhaps even outright against it until she’d been put under their own trial; would this damage that? Would it hurt her chances?

Would Sarah even understand his concerns about this?

Probably not, at least not until he spoke with her about it, and he wasn’t sure he was ready to, even though the need pressed down heavier on his shoulders with each passing day.

Every time he tried, Din found himself stopped by guilt, and the oppressive weight of the reminder that it was not his place to teach her of such things. It was a woman’s place to pass on the teachings to the daughters of the tribe. Even though there were many things he had to tell her of out of necessity, and were entirely allowable, things such as this were a vastly different matter of concern.

“I…” he closed his eyes, clenched his jaw. Din knew his silence was rude - humiliating, even - yet still, he could not find the words to answer.

“I tell you what,” Krae said carefully, and he opened his eyes as she grabbed his right wrist, then pushed the Beskar heart into the gloved palm, “You bring this to your Forgemaster, and you tell her Krae Viar of clan  _ Paak’aran _ vouches for the girl, and sends her regards. She’s earned this,” the armorer insisted, and closed his fingers around the heart piece. “And that should satisfy tradition. Sarah may have earned her place here, but I understand hers is a middle path,” Krae mused.

A chill ran down Din Djarin’s spine at the uncanny choice in words that reminded him sharply of prophecy.

_ “Vor entye,” _ he thanked her quietly. He owed her much.

“No. Thank  _ you,” _ Krae insisted. “I am honored to give service in this. Send her my way before you two go - We need to settle up yet on the  _ Kute.” _

“I will.”

“This is the Way,” Krae said simply, a note of finality to her words. Din Djarin returned the phrase, and stood still as he watched her leave.

His gaze dropped to the object in his hand, and he turned it over slowly in his palm. It was excellent craft; flawlessly shaped and finished, and he could see the multitudes of tiny, delicate metal connectors that life support sensors and other utilities would be connected to when the time came.

After a moment, Din opened up a pouch on his belt, and shuffled some items around to clear enough space to give it its own compartment.

He looked back at the tavern - all that was left was the loading of the disassembled frame and packed boxes, and some odd bits of remaining furniture.

With five Mandalorians at work, there was no need for another.

Mind made up, he bid a short farewell to Jahr, then struck off to find Sarah to deliver Krae’s message. After that, he would be ready to take his helmet off in the privacy of his ship, and enjoy a large glass of water. Break time.

~*~

“You wanted to see me?” a familiar voice announced, and Krae huffed in amusement. She turned around from the wooden box she had been busy putting parts of her forge into, and watched Sarah approach.

“Yes. Time to settle up; how’s the  _ Kute _ fit? Any chaffing?”

“It’s perfect,” the woman answered with a smile, and Krae huffed. She wasn’t sure if the girl meant it, or if she was just looking to be convenient. She stared her down, and when Sarah’s expression slowly grew furrowed brows and the beginnings of a frown of confusion, Krae decided it was genuinely meant. “How much do I owe?” the rookie asked.

“You have a few options. You can pay me in credits, material, or labor.”

“How about a mix of all three?” Sarah offered. “Do you use crystals for any of your work? I’ve picked up some great finds, but some won’t work for my purposes.”

Krae hummed thoughtfully. She used small fragments for some of the electronic parts, but she didn’t really need any more.

“What do you use them for?” she wondered curiously, and eyed the woman speculatively.

Sarah shifted her weight. Her expression didn’t change, but Krae caught the new tension in her shoulders.

“For… Focusing energy,” Sarah said quietly. “I weave the Force in them; they… resonate.”

“You mean with the child?” Krae prompted, newly fascinated.

“No. Just me,” Sarah clarified hesitantly, and Krae understood with widened eyes.

Opportunity prickled over her skin, sharp and exciting, and she looked the young woman up and down with a fresh appreciation. Afera had made a few comments about Sarah that hadn’t quite made sense, but now - everything clicked into place.

“Bring me what you have,” Krae decided eagerly.

She loved a puzzle to unravel, and this was a rare opportunity she wasn’t willing to let go of.

~*~

“You two look cozy,” Sarah commented as she entered the Razor Crest. Din had left the ramp open for her to come and go as she pleased while he occupied it, and she smiled at the two of them.

Din sat on the floor on her bed of blankets, boots off, while Grogu sat on his lap with a scattering of toys around him. Sarah’s smile widened as she watched the child use the Force to pull a familiar silver ball from Din’s fingers into his own little hand. She had since learned it was the knob for the ship’s throttle lever.

“He’s getting better at it,” her partner replied. “Faster. He can do more before he gets tired.”

“That’s a good thing. I’m looking forward to returning to regular practice with you both,” she enthused, then knelt to open up her locker box. “I’m heading back to Krae’s - Do either of you need anything?”

Din’s helmet turned her way, and though there was an air of expectation in the otherwise calm - almost  _ lazy _ \- roll of energy around him, he only shook his head. Sarah pondered the difference curiously, then dropped her gaze as Grogu burbled at her.

She couldn’t see more than the top of his head behind the chest’s lid, so scooted to the side for a better look, and smiled at the sight. The child held his ball in one hand, and eagerly reached for her with the other.

“...I can stay for a  _ little _ bit, then I have to go; Krae is waiting for me,” Sarah explained to him, then left her box open as she stood to step over the crates, and joined her family on the blankets. She was pleasantly surprised when Din lifted an arm in invitation, and slotted herself against his side as warm fuzzies bloomed in her chest. The edge of his cuirass poked her, but his sides were mostly bare fabric.

Grogo crawled off of him and onto her lap, then plopped down and leaned back against Sarah’s tummy.

“I’m glad we came here,” she said softly, and leaned her head against Din’s shoulder lightly. After a moment she shifted forward, because the pauldron really didn’t make cuddling like that comfortable for her neck.

The mood around her shifted, and she darted a glance to Din Djarin as the helmet swung her way. 

There were many things she could feel around him, but  _ guilt _ wasn’t something she was expecting.

Before she could ask what was wrong, he lifted his arm and cupped the side of her head, then pulled her closer to him. The side of his helmet rested against the top of her skull, and Sarah closed her eyes as her chest tightened unexpectedly.

If he didn’t have it on, she would be able to feel his cheek against her hair, hear his soft breaths.

She closed her eyes against the unexpected sting of tears. She knew she loved him, but did she really know this man? Would she ever see behind the cold metal? Could she  _ really _ have a lasting relationship with him, and remain barred from that connection?

It wasn’t about what he looked like beneath, as curious as she was to know.

It was about eye contact, facial expression, gentle touches. She craved contact, and she yearned to touch him.

Sarah opened her mouth to voice her questions, then halted the words on the tip of her tongue.

Now wasn’t the time. They would have plenty of it - and a better assurance of privacy - during travel through space.

After a moment, she sighed and relaxed against him, then brought a hand up to gently stroke Grogu’s head.

Her child burbled his content.

“I need to get back,” Sarah announced after a minute. Din hesitated, then loosened his hold on her, and she carefully picked Grogu up. She smiled at her foundling, then planted a kiss on his head before she transferred him to Din’s lap. His gloved hand came up to steady the child, and he watched her stand.

_ “Ret’ _ Sarah,” Din murmured. She smiled at his casual farewell, though she knew it probably faltered, her emotions still raw from the unexpected rush of conflict she still felt.

“Can we talk tonight?” Sarah blurted as she stepped over the chests and turned around, and swallowed. She wasn’t going to be able to wait until they were in flight; that was still days away.

She didn’t think she wanted to talk about  _ everything _ that had weighed on her mind of late, but they could discuss some long-overdue questions that their recent mission had put on the sidelines.

“Yes,” he agreed simply, and she recognized a note of strain in his voice.

She wasn’t the only one with things on her mind.

That thought gave her comfort, and this time, her smile was genuine.

“Don’t get into trouble without me,” she teased, then fetched the cloth sack that contained her spoils from Tatooine, and shut the lid.

“We’ll wait,” Din promised after a moment, and Sarah laughed.

With a final wave, she left them to their lazy afternoon.

~*~

When Sarah rejoined Krae, she found the woman seated on the ground in front of a low, rectangular table. It was situated on the grass beside her dismantled  _ vheh’yaim. _ Afera was present, busy stacking boxes in one central pile for easy pick-up, and both wore their helmets. 

There was something strangely ritual about the simple act of taking a seat across from the armorer, and Sarah set the sack down on the table. It was made of dark wood, polished both from good care and from what looked to be many years of use. Small scuffs and dents marred the surface here and there, and she could see evidence of sanding to repair more significant damage.

“What all do you have?” Krae asked eagerly. It was such a difference from her calm serenity that Sarah found herself amused by the change.

“A lot. Actually, there’s one I don’t recognize, and-- Oh, uh.”

Sarah had upended the bag and carefully dumped the entire lot out onto the table, and Krae’s entire form went stiff and rigid at the dull  _ thunk _ of one item in particular.

The hunk of Beskar ore sat glittering and dazzling in the sunshine, reflecting the multitudes of colors from the crystals that surrounded it.

Krae reached for it with jerky movements, and Sarah quickly reached out to put her fingers over it, lips drawn into a thin line.

She couldn’t believe she’d  _ forgotten _ about it. So much had happened recently that she’d had little time to contemplate the acquisition.

“This is Din’s,” Sarah explained hastily. “I won’t trade it.”

“Now what’s got a stick shoved up your--” Afera cut himself off as he came to stand behind his wife, and Sarah swallowed.

She wasn’t actually sure if it was a  _ bad _ thing for them to see the Beskar, but it was unnerving to witness their intensity.

“Is that…?” he prompted, his voice an octave higher, a very strange thing to hear from the grizzled warrior. It was almost alarming.

“It’s Beskar ore,” Sarah confirmed hesitantly. “I bought it for Din.”

_ “Where?” _ Krae demanded.

“Tatooine. The same place I got the rest of the crystals here.”

“May I?” the armorer practically begged, and Sarah didn’t have the heart to refuse her. She withdrew her hand, and watched as the woman gingerly picked the piece up.

There was a reverence in the way Krae handled it that almost made Sarah feel bad for carelessly lugging it around in a sack. When a drop of water dripped from the bottom of the cyan helmet, Sarah’s eyes widened in shock.

Just one, but it was damning evidence. The woman was  _ crying. _

“I never thought I would live to see this again,” Krae breathed in a voice that trembled, as she turned the piece over in her hand and watched the way it reflected light.

Sarah had never seen it under the sun, and she was surprised to see it had its own rainbowy shimmer that Din’s armor didn’t possess. It hadn’t just been the crystals around it being reflected.

“That must have cost a  _ fortune,” _ Afera rumbled hoarsely. “Blackmarket?” he guessed.

Sarah didn’t actually know, but figured it was safe to assume it was. She swallowed.

“Uh... I talked him down in price,” she hedged.

Two helmets slowly turned to face her. Sarah fidgeted.

“Why don’t you start from the beginning? I want to know more of this vendor,” Krae said, the air around her sharp with a burning intensity Sarah didn’t need to reach out with her abilities to feel. “Where,  _ exactly, _ does he live?”

Another drip of water fell, and darkened the wood tabletop. Afera’s hand settled on his wife’s shoulder, and squeezed lightly.

In the face of their powerful, emotional reactions, Sarah hardly felt there was any choice but to share the story of its acquisition, and launched into the short tale.

~*~

Din sat up at the sound of footsteps approaching, and listened intently. He carefully moved Grogu off his lap and jumped to his feet as he recognized there was more than one pair of boots crunching over the ground, then grabbed his own footwear.

He had just finished shoving his legs into them when light steps sounded on the ramp to the ship, and Sarah came into view with Krae at her side. The armorer stood  _ very _ close to his clanmate, one arm reached around behind Sarah’s back and settled on the opposite shoulder in an alarmingly proprietary manner. Sarah’s pale cheeks were flushed bright with color, and Din recognized the look on her face - Someone had either corrected her on something, or goaded her into talking about something she’d done.

His eyes dropped to the familiar cloth sack in Sarah’s hands, and memory stirred. Din had a guess which it was.

Grogu beeped in greeting as he pulled himself up onto the chests, then sat down and mouthed the shiny ball he so adored.

“By the gods,  _ marry _ this woman,” Krae said bluntly as she delivered Sarah into the ship, and they came to a halt in front of him. “You’d better put some of this into her armor, or so help me, I will have you castrated.”

“...Some for her, some for the Foundlings,” Din answered stiffly. What he chose to do with it wasn’t Krae’s place to make demands of.

Her first comment he ignored entirely, even though his heart skipped a beat. It was far too early to be talking about  _ that. _

“I don’t need--” 

Krae smacked Sarah lightly on the back of the head to cut off her protest.

_ “Ne’johaa!” _ the armorer barked sharply. “Did you even  _ tell her _ the absolute enormity of what she did? What it means to have this back in the tribe again?” Krae demanded.

Din frowned at the armorer’s rude behavior, even as he felt an unwanted sympathy to her expressive reactions. Her emotional response was understandable. What Sarah had done  _ was _ incredible, in more ways than one. Din had been there to see it.

“She is not a child, and we are not yours to command,” he answered carefully. “She is aware of its importance,” he added.

“I don’t think she is,” Krae argued. “If she was, she wouldn’t have waltzed through the covert carrying it around in a sack and dumped it out on my table, calmly as you please. Teach. Her.” There was a growl to the elder woman’s voice, and she shoved a flustered Sarah forward with a steady hand on the back.

“She will be taught,” Din answered stiffly.

“She’d better be! I’d claim her as my own daughter under other circumstances. Your Forgemaster is a lucky woman,” Krae enthused emphatically. There was an undeniable wistfulness to her voice Din found hard not to sympathize with, because she was right.

“I have enough adoption offers!” Sarah spluttered.

As the two began to bicker like close friends, something the armorer had said caught Din’s attention, and he went utterly still.

“I never told you the Forgemaster was a woman.”

Both women trailed off and turned to look at him. Sarah’s eyes widened, and she darted her gaze back and forth between them both.

“You didn’t need to; we’ve met,” Krae answered stiffly. “Unless things have changed in recent years… I recognize her work,” she added with a nod to him.

Blood rushed to Din’s head, and his heart pounded audibly in his own ears as he stared at the woman.

_ “Who _ do you know?” he demanded quietly, thoughts racing, desperate to know what she knew of his family, desperate to know if she knew something of who may have escaped Navarro’s slaughter. He had not been able to get in touch with anyone, not since he’d first left the planet behind to flee with Grogu.

It was unlikely, and yet - he grasped at straws of hope.

Krae shifted her weight.

“Forgemaster Werlaara.”

~*~

Sarah took one look between the two helmeted Mandalorians, set the bag she carried down on her footlocker, then edged over to quietly take Grogu from Din Djarin.

The man was completely still, like a frozen statue.

Sarah was pretty sure he’d even stopped breathing.

As she settled Grogu into the crook of her left arm, she looked back to Krae.

The armorer was completely still.

Sarah contemplated if the woman had  _ also _ stopped breathing, then decided that if the two of them didn’t get ahold of themselves, they were going to make  _ her _ stop breathing, because the atmosphere between them was quickly becoming suffocating. Energy rolled around the room in tight coils of constipated emotions Sarah couldn’t even begin to place, but could guess the nature of from the postures of each individual. It was even affecting Grogu, who had white showing on the very edges of his wide eyes, and he’d shrunk down into his snuggly robe with drooped ears.

And still, nothing.

Sarah cleared her throat, and both helmets snapped to face her. Keeping her sigh internal, Sarah worked her jaw for a moment, and realized she had no idea what to say.

So she said the first thing to come to mind.

“...Tea?” she offered, even though she had no idea - yet - where to get it. Then she decided that was  _ perfect, _ because it would give these two statues a chance to talk about… whatever it is that was going on. Sarah didn’t catch any threatening vibes from either of them despite their stand-off, so she wasn’t worried about leaving them alone together.

Mostly.

She had only the vaguest idea of understanding about this topic, even with the clues she’d picked up on in their conversation.

Krae finally answered her in a quick quip of  _ Mando’a, _ fast enough Sarah didn’t understand what was said except a single ‘yes’ at the end.

Din didn’t say a word - he only reached up and touched Sarah lightly on the back of the head, his fingers spread, palm warm. He gave a single nod, and she fled the room.

“Sabine,” Sarah called as she knocked on the woman’s  _ vheh’yaim. _ There were boxes stacked outside, but the building was otherwise untouched. Her friend likely wouldn’t be taking down her own shelter until it was closer to the end of teardown.

“Yo, Sarah - What’s up? You look like you stepped on a box credit,” Sabine mused as she lifted up the tarp in the doorway, face bared.

“I need a pot of tea and an extra cup, to occupy the hands of two Mandalorians who are engaging in the ancient art of helmet stares.”

Sabine’s eyebrows rose.

“I can get you some  _ Shig; _ who’s in the staring contest, Marrek and Din?” she guessed as she waved Sarah inside.

Sarah followed her in, adjusting Grogu in her arm. He cooed quietly, and looked around the space with interest. After a moment, Sarah did the same; Sabine’s space was as decorative as her armor, and there were colorful spills of vibrant paint splatters on the reed floor, concentrated around a short, makeshift table.

“Krae and Din,” she answered belatedly.

“Woah, really? Why?”

“...I’m not entirely sure,” Sarah hedged. “But they definitely needed some space to talk. What all do you paint? Armor?” she wondered, and walked over to investigate the short art desk.

“Anything and everything I can get my hands on,” Sabine replied with a cheeky grin as she opened up one of the two footlockers in her tent. “I’ve even got a paint sprayer to bring on missions. I’d have tagged the Imp’s warehouses if it wasn’t a stealth mission,” she declared with a wistful cast to her voice.

Sarah couldn’t say she was surprised.

“Here… Got this from Marrek,” Sabine announced as she pulled out a small, flat canister.

“The last thing Din drank from Marrek got spat right back out,” Sarah said, amused. “Is he going to kill me if he drinks that?”

“Naaaah… But it should mellow them both out pretty well. Don’t ever drink it before you need to do anything important, because it makes you kinda sleepy.”

“Uh. Is it… drugged?” Sarah wondered, eyes wide.

“No, not like that. Well…” Sabine trailed off as she scrutinized the small, circular can, then shrugged. “I’d be surprised if he’s never had it before, it’s pretty common; it’s made from an herb that relaxes the muscles. Tell them what it is before you offer it if you’re worried; it’s usually known as  _ Sharal’shig.  _ I just call it chill juice,” she added with a grin.

“Thank you, I’ll bring it back when we’re done,” Sarah promised.

“Keep it, I’ll get more from Marrek, and I think you need it more than I do,” Sabine teased, then stepped over and carefully wedged the canister into Sarah’s sling. “You need another cup, right? Do you have a way to cook it?”

“We’ve got a steeping machine on the ship, I’ve never actually used it,” Sarah explained. “But I do need another cup, we just have the one.”

“You all share? That’s kind of adorable.”

“We just haven’t gotten around to getting another. Things have been… busy,” Sarah answered, amused. She privately agreed.

“I’ll grab you two you can keep... Soooooo, you can tell me if this is too personal,” Sabine continued, and Sarah instantly tensed as she watched Sabine return to her chest to rummage. “But I’ve gotta ask - have you guys actually kissed yet? How does that even work with the whole helmet thing?”

Grogu beeped and burbled, and Sarah  _ swore _ the child was trying to tattle on her. Except he shouldn’t even know about it himself, so that couldn’t be right.

Then again, children had the most uncanny way of knowing things they shouldn’t, so maybe he did.

Sarah cleared her throat.

“I… Haven’t seen his face,” she hedged, face warm, and shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “We’ve kissed,” she mumbled, and surprised herself by the admission.

It had been a long time since she’d had a trustworthy friend to confide in on matters of ‘girl-talk.’

She liked it.

“Awww. Is he a good kisser?” Sabine prompted, and Sarah narrowed her eyes even as her stomach filled with butterflies at the memories the question prompted. It was taking Sabine a  _ long _ time to look through her chest, especially with how neatly organized Sarah could see everything was.

“...He is,” she admitted.

“If he breaks your heart, I’ll break his permanently,” Sabine declared as she stood, and closed the lid of her trunk. “You deserve someone who will treat you right,” she asserted, and stopped in front of Sarah. “I mean it. Don’t look all shell-shocked.”

“I wasn’t--”

“You’re a clever woman, Sarah, but some things you’re pretty transparent about. I’ve seen the way you’ve looked at him lately. You want more, and you’re not getting it.”

Sarah cleared her throat, and shifted the suspiciously quiet child in her arm up a little higher. On the one hand, she was touched by Sabine’s concern.

On the other…

“We have a lot to talk about. Helmets aren’t even the  _ least _ of it,” Sarah answered.

“How did you two meet, anyways?” Sabine wondered as she led the way out of the  _ vheh’yaim, _ holding the cups hostage so Sarah had little choice but to follow. They fell into step beside each other, and Sarah wondered if her friend was intending to get a peek at the two Mandalorians holed up on the Razor Crest.

If so, she was going to stop her before she could actually intrude.

“In a gunfight. I rescued Grogu, and then he rescued us both,” she explained, and looked down to smile at the child she carried. He wasn’t paying attention to her, instead looking around at the covert and its busy preparations with perked ears.

“And you just fell madly in love and hopped ship with him? That’s so cute,” Sabine enthused. Sarah scoffed.

“No. He needed a babysitter for Grogu. Everything else came… Later. I didn’t really realize how much I’d come to like him until we’d spent time here.” After a moment, Sarah decided to be a little more open, and could feel a lazy smile on her face as she remembered the night of the party. “It was after the bonfire; he taught me the steps to a dance,” she revealed.

“What dance?” Sabine wondered.

“I… Don’t know what it’s called,” Sarah admitted. “But it was beautiful.”

“Show me?” her friend asked and stopped in her tracks, eyes bright and curious. “I could probably tell you its name.”

Sarah hesitated, then looked down at Grogu. He burbled at her, and she smiled, then set him down on the ground.

“It was like this,” Sarah began, and carefully slipped her arm out of its sling. For a split second she panicked over if Soren would catch her, then quickly decided that even if he  _ did, _ this was fine. She wasn’t doing anything more than gesturing.

Sabine’s eyebrows climbed as Sarah mimed half of the starting dance steps by herself.

“He told me the meaning for each move.”

“Yeah, but did he tell you the meaning of the  _ dance?” _ Sabine asked, awe in her voice.

“Well, yeah - He said it was for people who trusted each other.”

“Ok, let’s just recap; Din Djarin  _ sucks _ at talking, and actions only speak louder when the other person actually knows what they even mean,” Sabine asserted firmly. “Sarah, this is how you show someone how much you love them. And I’m pretty sure he thinks of you as more than just a friend, so it wasn’t a dance about being besties.”

Sarah didn’t need Sabine to tell her that Din had feelings for her, but hearing it still made her toes curl in her boots as her face flushed with heat. She cleared her throat and carefully returned her arm to its sling, then let Grogu waddle alongside as they resumed their walk.

“I know he does,” she said finally.

“It’s called  _ Briirud Burcyan _ \- the Circle Bond,” Sabine continued. “Some just call it the Circle Step. It’s an old dance, very traditional. You almost never see it outside of clanmates or married couples,” she casually revealed, and Sarah tripped over nothing.

“We’re - Not - We’re  _ not _ engaged,” she wheezed, strongly reminded of Krae’s comment when she’d escorted her back to the ship. If Din Djarin thought that’s what they were, he was going to have another thing coming.

Sabine laughed.

“I didn’t say you were, but honestly? I’m not so worried about him leaving you high and dry now, hearing about that. He’s  _ serious,” _ she mused.

“He’s not the type to mess around,” Sarah mumbled. Of that, she was certain. She paused to watch Sabine as the woman stooped to pick Grogu up, then bounced him in her arms.

Sarah stared at the two of them, because it struck her soundly on the head that she was thinking of them as her friend, her child.

She swallowed thickly.

Grogu wouldn’t be hers forever.

She didn’t want to think about that right now.

“Welllll anyhow, I’m glad you two are close. It’s good for the little guy, isn’t that right, Grogu?” Sabine asked, and stopped bouncing him so she could stroke his head as he cooed up at her. He had his version of a smile on his face, and Sarah’s heart melted.

“Thank you, for everything, Sabine. I’m glad we met,” she said softly.

“Me, too! Have fun with the helmet stares,” Sabine added, then passed the cups over and set Grogu down so he could walk on his own.

_ “Ret’ _ Sabine,” Sarah called in farewell as her friend walked off.

When Sarah returned to the ship, little had changed. The atmosphere was still claustrophobic in its intense density, and pressed around her in palpable waves. It didn’t seem  _ dangerous, _ just… Very weighted, and crackled with a different kind of tension.

Krae and Din had moved one of the rectangular boxes to the middle of the open floor to serve as a table, and Sarah was touched to note they’d left obvious space for her. Krae sat in the center of her side of the flat box, but Din was seated to one side.

_ “Su’cuy, _ ” Sarah greeted as she entered, and went straight to preparing the tea blend -  _ Shig, _ she reminded herself - after pulling down the small, fold-out countertop that served as their food preparation space. “Sabine’s given us some  _ Sharal’shig _ , is that alright?” she questioned.

“Yes,” Krae answered simply. Out of the corner of her eye, Sarah caught the slight movement of Din’s helmet as he no doubt looked her way.

It was a little strange to see him so formal in such an otherwise casual setting. A makeshift table on the floor in the middle of a spaceship wasn’t exactly fine dining, yet there was a sort of decorum to the way both Mandalorians sat with straight spines, raised chins, and their fists loosely pressed to the tops of their thighs. Each kneeled on the ground, and she wondered if it was as comfortable as it looked with the armor and strapping on their heavy leather boots.

“Ah… How long do I steep it for?” Sarah asked into the silence as the machine beeped at her to enter a time.

“Four minutes,” Krae supplied calmly. Her serene voice didn’t match the crackle of energy in the air.

Sarah looked over when Din stood up, and watched him step up to the door controls to shut the Razor Crest’s ramp. Some of the tension eased when after he resumed his seat, Grogu waddled over to crawl into his lap.

The child was a good influence on the adults in the room, Sarah mused.

“You are both  _ Jetii?” _ Krae wondered aloud. Sarah cleared her throat.

“I’m not really sure what I am except me,” she answered.

“You are Mandalorian,” Krae supplied placidly.

Sarah almost dropped the cup she was holding, and Din’s helmet turned to look sharply at the armorer, his shoulders going rigid and tense, before they relaxed.

“I-I am?”

“You will be,” Din supplied with a hoarseness to his voice she was familiar with; emotion always managed to strangle his words. “Soon,” he added softly.

Sarah opened her mouth, then quickly shut it before she could blurt out something else she wasn’t ready to talk about, especially not with a guest present.

The silence stretched. She was pleased when the machine finally beeped to announce the brew was ready, and Sarah started filling the mis-matched cups. A strange and not unpleasant aroma quickly flooded the room, and her nose tingled. It wasn’t quite earthy, and it wasn’t quite fruity, but somewhere in-between. The drink itself was a pale green-brown that matched the color of the ground leaves she’d sprinkled into the strainer.

Armor and cloth rustled, and Sarah wasn’t surprised to find Din shortly arrived at her side to help her carry the cups. She smiled at him in silent thanks, then led the way back to the table, and set the cup she carried down for Krae.

The armorer’s gray-gloved fingers slowly closed around it, and Sarah realized that the woman still had yet to remove her helmet.

She took a seat next to her partner, and unconsciously mirrored Din’s posture as she knelt down instead of sitting cross-legged.

After a moment of stillness, the two warriors each lifted their helmets up just enough to uncover their chins, and Sarah followed them in taking a sip of the brew. It was the perfect temperature - not too hot, and not too cold - and tasted much like it smelled, right down to a tingling sensation that lingered on her tongue.

Sarah caught her child watching them curiously. He reached towards her with one tiny hand, and flexed his fingers in silent request. “Can Grogu have this?” she wondered aloud

“A sip won’t hurt him. Might make for an early naptime,” Krae answered.

Din didn’t object, so Sarah reached over to quietly let their Foundling try from her cup.

_ Their _ Foundling.

Sarah’s heart stuttered.

Grogu cooed quietly, eager, then took two quick gulps before she could draw the cup back, and settled down against Din’s stomach.

“You’ve met Forgemaster Werlaara,” Din stated bluntly, and Sarah looked up.

“I have.”

“Do you - Have you… Heard from anyone of the covert?” he questioned. The tension from before was beginning to increase again, and Sarah closed her eyes as she held her warm cup in her hands, and quietly focused on radiating a soothing, calming aura around them.

She didn’t think it worked as well as it had when she’d been in direct contact with him, but the air did become easier to breathe again.

“You are strange,” Krae observed instead of immediately answering Din. Startled, Sarah opened her eyes. “I can feel that.”

“Uh, sorry, I was - I didn’t think it’d reach you,” Sarah answered, dumbstruck, then cleared her throat, painfully aware she’d interrupted their conversation.

A hand settled on her hip as Din stretched an arm behind her back, and Sarah hastily hid her face behind her cup to take a prolonged sip.

The cyan helmet across from her turned back to Din.

“I have not, not in several years. Why?”

The silence stretched, and the hand on Sarah’s hip tightened briefly before she felt the man beside her relax. Marginally.

“Many died,” Din answered quietly. “Some months ago - Imperials attacked the covert. I don’t know who made it off-world.”

The metal cup in Krae’s hand crumpled slightly. That it was thin metal didn’t make the sight anymore heart-wrenching to witness.

“If I hear anything, I will inform Sabine to pass the information on,” Krae answered after a moment.

“Thank you,” Din answered quietly, and Sarah peeked over at him when she recognized the strain in his voice, and a new flavor of emotion that clung to him like a thick miasma.

Guilt.

“You’re wondering where she would relocate the Covert to,” Krae guessed.

Sarah cleared her throat.

“I’d prefer not to know, if you’re going to discuss locations,” she interrupted.

“Oh?” the armorer questioned.

“Long story,” Din supplied. “Do you speak Huttese?” he questioned, and Sarah assumed he meant to simply switch languages.

“I do. I’ll head upstairs,” she offered. “Call me back when you’re done.”

~*~

It didn’t take long until Sarah heard footsteps echo quietly through the ship, and she opened up the blast doors of the storage room to peer down the ladderwell. Din Djarin’s helmet looked up at her.

“You can come down,” he announced. His voice was rough, but there was a lightness to his voice that hadn’t been there before, and his posture was loose and relaxed.

Sarah took that as a good sign, and in short order, they were both seated back at the chest. As she settled into place, she realized she could feel a subtle difference in her body - tension she hadn’t realized she’d been carrying in her shoulders and upper back was gone.

“Where’s Grogu?” she wondered.

“In his hammock, asleep,” Din answered. Krae took a sip from her cup across from them, and Sarah hummed softly as she gathered her own up.

“So… You guys work out what you needed to?” Sarah guessed.

“We did,” Din confirmed.

“Not quite,” Krae countered. “I have business with the girl.”

Sarah nodded; they still needed to settle up.

“Which crystals do you want?”

“None of them. Instead, I want experience. Indulge my curiosity,” the armorer bartered, and Sarah blinked at her.

“...What are you curious about?” she questioned, even as an idea of what it could be began to nag at her.

“I want to see how you utilize them. I have heard stories of  _ Jetii _ and the meditations they utilized to cultivate a strong connection with the cores they used for their sabers; Perhaps something of your craft could benefit my work. And if not, then it will satisfy an old woman’s fondness for seeing legends brought to life.”

Sarah opened her mouth, then shut it.

Krae waited patiently for her answer.

“Uh. I… Didn’t know they did that,” Sarah said finally, and the armorer’s helmet tipped a fraction of an inch, her shoulders straightening.

“No? How did you learn?” she asked, and Sarah didn’t think she fancied the fascination audible in the woman’s voice.

She reached up to tuck hair behind an ear, only to meet short strands from her recent cut.

It was taking some getting used to.

“I… Knew a woman who used rocks for ceremonies. Their culture holds them to be living things; and when I studied with her, I believed it, because it was true,” Sarah explained softly. “Everything has a resonance to it.” She lifted a hand up and placed three fingers lightly to Din Djarin’s pauldron as his head turned towards her. “Even this.”

“You can work the Force into... Beskar?” the armorer asked, her voice faint. Sarah shifted her weight.

“I… Don’t know.” She cleared her throat. “I’m not allowed to try. Yet?” she tried, and peeked over at Din.

The helmet lifted a fraction from staring at her hand on his shoulder, and she met the horizontal bar of his dark visor.

“You’re a little old to be taken on as a smith’s apprentice,” Krae began slowly. “But Forgemaster Werlaara has been known to bend the rules now and then.”

Sarah jolted as Din’s helmet whipped forward.

“What do you mean?” he demanded.

“I was old to be an apprentice when she took me under her teachings,” the woman revealed.

“You’re sworn to the Creed?” Din asked, his entire body rigid, though there was a subtle delay to the way his shoulders drew taut. Sarah slowly sipped her beverage as she wrapped both hands back around the warm cup.

“I am. I still follow its tenants,” Krae revealed, then carefully tipped her helmet to take a drink as if to emphasize her point.

“Why do you hide your faces?” Sarah blurted. She had meant to ask Din about it in private, but with  _ two _ armored enigmas present in the room, it was too much of an opportunity to overlook. If the offer of a specific topic might give Din Djarin something to focus on beyond his immediate emotional turmoil, all the better.

“We do not  _ hide _ our faces,” Krae corrected severely. “You’ve not told her?” she questioned, rather rhetorically, but Sarah gathered it was more a way for the armorer to scold her partner than to truly interrogate him.

“It’s not my place to,” Din answered stiffly. After a moment, Krae inclined her head, then turned to face Sarah.

~*~

Krae examined the young - well, comparably young - woman in front of her. There was a desperate light in Sarah’s crystal blue eyes that spoke of an obvious need to know more, and perhaps other emotions.

Krae contemplated how to begin. She didn’t think Din Djarin would welcome her going into details on certain matters, as that would be the place of the women of his home covert, which she had gathered he was determined to follow up on.

With the information she had provided to give him an idea of how he might locate his family without a direct line of communication, she felt confident he would.

Mind made up, Krae decided to address only the most relevant matter at hand, as Sarah herself had brought it up. Werlaara could handle the rest.

“We do not hide our faces,” she repeated, then settled her hands loosely around her cup of  _ shig _ on the chest as she continued, “These  _ are _ our faces. We are Mandalorian, and our armor unites us as one. One tribe, formed of many clans, many families, all held within the collective essence of our people. When you don your armor, your helmet, you embrace the very soul of what it is to be of the  _ Mando’ade. _ Without that, what are we but living flesh within a shell of metal? What separates us from others who wear armor to serve only a practical function?

“We are more than mere warriors. We are a culture, formed and forged by a collection of strict ideals. Our history is bloody, and our family ties are stronger even than the very bloodshed that has brought us together.”

Krae reached a hand up to touch her helmet, heard the muffled  _ shfh _ of fabric against the painted Beskar. She observed the Initiate in front of her as Sarah watched with rapt attention, her gaze unblinking as she hung on every word spoken.

“The metal we forge our armor from - when it can be had - is found only on our home planet, and the moon that circles it. Mandalore, and Concordia, respectively,” Krae clarified, just in case the Initiate had not caught an astronomy lesson during her grueling weeks of study crammed between her training schedule and chores. “Beskar,” she said with reverence, its name a welcome song of short melody on her tongue, “Is unique to our people, and integral to our way of life.”

She fell silent then, both to allow Sarah time to absorb the information, and to see if she had any questions.

It did not take long for one to be voiced.

“Is it… Difficult to wear it?” Sarah asked. The question didn’t particularly surprise Krae; it was a practical thing to wonder about.

“Perhaps at first. Your peripheral vision will be hampered, naturally, but the utilities you may choose to customize your equipment with will make up for that with time and practice.”

“Afera removes his helmet,” Sarah said slowly, and Krae felt her lips twitch with a smile. She knew where this was heading.

“Rarely. Around outsiders? Never.”

“You’ve been married a long time,” the young woman hedged. Krae’s smile widened.

“We share the same soul. What is mine, is his. What is his, is mine. Our flesh is as one,” Krae revealed placidly, and watched the young couple’s reactions.

Din Djarin went utterly still, save for the faintest shift of his weight as he glanced at his partner.

_ ‘You haven’t told her of  _ that _ , either,’ _ Krae mused thoughtfully. She was rather impressed the two had come together as they had in the first place. It was possible the man had forsaken his Oath, but Krae didn’t think that was the case.

It was not easy to look beyond the cold visage of Beskar and see the life within; a nearly impenetrable barrier, yet somehow, they had come close enough to look beyond and do without the easier connections most took for granted.

Krae still vividly remembered the first time her eyes had met Afera’s without a visor between them, and a proud warmth blossomed in her chest at the vivid memory.

All this she thought in the few moments of speculation in examining the man across from her, and then she turned her gaze to Sarah. Her cheeks were flushed with a light dusting of color, and her expressive eyes had widened.

And in them, curiosity and hope bloomed bright and dazzling.

“Most take the bond of mates for granted, in a universe stretched thin with a clash of cultures, and a loss of traditions burdened by the wars that have ravaged communities. For Mandalorians, the choice to partner is a sacred act. Forgemaster Werlaara may teach you more of such things,” Krae said, her smile turning into a smirk as she watched the way Din Djarin’s back went ramrod straight.

She almost wished she would be there to see the young whelp be treated to her old mentor’s lecture when he showed up with his unusual clanmate in tow. It was sure to cause a spectacle.

“Any other questions?” Krae asked calmly, though she knew the girl would likely catch the amusement in her voice. She had never been very good at hiding her mood, something her lover had - and still - often teased her about.

“If that’s how it is… Then how are you ok with everyone else who takes their helmets off here?” Sarah asked slowly, a carefulness to her voice that Krae suspected meant she had been questioning this for some time.

“The short answer is I have become used to it. The much longer answer? I’m not, not truly. There are times I weep, for I fear the lost souls of my family will fade from song, that I will not join my husband in the  _ Manda  _ that follows our time spent in the living realm. At other times, I wonder if such things can be forgiven by the gods, when one holds true to all else.”

“The  _ Manda?” _ Sarah repeated.

“A question for the Forgemaster,” Krae deferred. “Now, then… If your curiosity is satisfied?” she prompted. The young woman across from her straightened. For a moment Sarah looked uncomfortable, then the tension seemed to ease out of her as a bright smile bloomed across her features.

Krae watched as the initiate stood to collect her sack of earthen spoils, then carefully dumped the bag out onto the chest. Rocks clinked, and the chunk of raw Beskar rang dully.

“Can you tell me what you know of the  _ Jetii’s _ practices?” Sarah asked eagerly, and began to arrange the crystals on the table before her. Krae noted that the girl seemed to be putting them in specific order, yet there was no obvious rhyme or reason to her placement.

She did not arrange them by type, even though there were obvious duplicates amidst the colorful pile. The Beskar ore she gingerly set to one corner, then nudged a yellow rock closer to it.

“Their  _ jetii’kad _ often utilized crystal cores to focus the beam of energy, and power their weapon,” Krae began after a moment. “They had a ceremony to gather them. I am told they would spend anywhere from days to weeks in meditative trance to select what rock to use, harvested by their own hand from the mines. Following that, many more hours of their time were spent with the crystal to… Program it,” she finished awkwardly. Krae knew precious little of the practice, and most of what she had gathered over the years could be attributed to speculation or a glib storyteller’s inventive imagination.

“I’m supposed to pick a core for mine,” Sarah answered as she laid the last crystal out, a deep purple with a white gradient throughout the center of its elongated, rough spike.

“You are building one?” Krae asked, intrigued.

“Sort of. I’m repairing one. Or, I will be. I haven’t had time to work with it,” the girl admitted.

If Krae had not already packed up the majority of her forge and tools, she thought wistfully she would have liked to offer her services in the project. It had been generations since a Mandalorian’s saber had been built, and of those few, she knew of only one that remained.

Werlaara was a lucky woman, indeed.

“Why do you arrange them as such?” Krae prompted, and gestured to the spread arrayed between them. Din’s visor followed the motion, then tilted a fraction to linger on his partner.

“Huh?” Sarah looked up at her.

“The crystals. You are very purposeful in your placements. Why not group them together?”

The woman’s brows furrowed, and Krae realized something significant.

The girl didn’t understand her own actions.

It was likely an act earned from direct experience, and no doubt her own intuition.

Newly fascinated, Krae boldly reached over, and eyed the rookie as she hovered a hand over one of the glittering rocks. Sarah didn’t protest, though her gaze dropped to watch.

Krae lifted it up, then placed it in a new spot between other stones, and Sarah’s shoulders went rigid.

“Interesting,” Krae mused. “You’re that sensitive to their… resonance?”

“I… I guess,” Sarah answered hesitantly, then darted a hand out to pick up the crystal. She rubbed a thumb over it, then gently returned it to its place. “The song clashes.”

“Song?” Krae repeated.

“Uh… Yeah. It’s like - It’s not really  _ music, _ it’s more like… I don’t really know how to describe it. It’s like seeing a color, or hearing a note, except you don’t actually. It’s… felt,” Sarah finished awkwardly.

“What were you taught?” Krae wondered.

“To… Trust what I heard, what I felt from them. This one doesn’t like me much,” Sarah answered, and hovered a finger over a pinkish rock with a cracked end. “Not that it actually has a personality, that’s just - the easiest way to describe what it feels like to me. It doesn’t resonate, it’s… Closed off. Think of it like the difference between a weapon that fits your hand perfectly, versus one you can hold and use yet doesn’t feel comfortable.”

Krae nodded slowly, and speculated over the welcomed absurdity of Sarah being able to convert something so seemingly esoteric into such easily relatable terms. It made sense, and Krae thought she understood.

This was also good for the young woman herself, she mused. There was no better way to become familiar with a subject and hone a skill than to exercise it, and being forced to find explanations for what Sarah no doubt internalized would help broaden her own understanding of her unique talent.

With a newly formed goal in mind, Krae set about not only indulging her own curiosity, but coaxing the girl into an informal lesson through experience.

~*~

At first, Din Djarin had to admit - he was rather bored. The woman’s talk of rocks and energies went above his head, though he thought he grasped the basics. It wasn’t so different from the training Sarah had provided him with on the Force, regarding its use as both a weapon and a supporting tool for the mind.

However, unlike that, Din saw no way to apply this knowledge in his own use. The pile of rocks on the table were pleasing to look at, he supposed, but he didn’t feel any kind of connection to them. And he certainly didn’t hear any... song. Resonance. Whatever it was Sarah perceived from them, he didn’t get the same feedback.

Once Krae began to speculate on uses for weapons and armor, however, he finally had a solid foundation to grasp at understanding.

The Beskar heart he had in his belt pouch weighed heavily on his mind, and he contemplated whether he should provide it to Sarah early, to allow her to do… Whatever it was she did with things. He knew each piece held a circuit board with a crystal shard set into it.

Then again, she’d have time to do it when they found the Forgemaster, and then the smith herself could decide what was appropriate for Sarah to proceed with.

That would serve best.

“What does Beskar sound like to you?” Din asked abruptly, his attention caught as Sarah finished describing to Krae what some of the various crystals resonances came to her as. Her icy gaze swung his way, and he liked the eager smile on her lips.

“I haven’t tried to listen to it,” she admitted. “But at a glance? A soft hum. Steady, strong. Like a heartbeat, except it never goes completely silent,” she explained, and tilted her hand in the air in a waving motion.

It made little logical sense to Din, even with her attempt at a visual example, yet it seemed somehow fitting; Beskar was the heart of the  _ Mando’ade. _ He was pleased to hear it manifest in such a way to Sarah.

It felt… right.

“Tell me again of the ceremony for the Dowsing Stone,” Krae prompted. “You said you had to follow the seasons astrologically to hone its purpose?”

“Yes. I don’t remember all the reasons why, since it was several years ago, but I remember that it felt like. One night, when we went out to the lake to retrieve it for the first cleansing, it was like needles poked my skin when I went to take it, and I knew it wasn’t time. Fershai’lar’s calendar was off by a few hours from a power outage - we had to wait for the moon to rise higher.”

As the women engrossed themselves back in conversation, Din Djarin shifted his weight to a more comfortable kneeling position. His cup was empty, and he could feel the pleasant looseness in his muscles as the  _ Sharal’shig _ did its work.

His thoughts drifted, and he pondered what the coming months would entail. He felt no closer to his quest of locating Grogu’s kin, though he was satisfied at the start they had made through Sabine sending out requests to the coverts she was connected to. He wondered what it would be like when he finally found the new covert’s location, who might be there to welcome them.

If they would be welcomed at all.

His gaze drifted to Sarah, and he observed her face as she spoke. At first, her explanations had been stiff and hesitant, with frequent filler-words and long pauses. Now, she spoke animatedly, her hands gesturing as she delved into not only her own experiences, but her theories and questions.

He might not understand everything she spoke of, but he could admire her intellect.

His gaze dropped to her lips, rosy and full, and he sighed quietly. His eyes lowered again, and he studied the green thread on her shoulder, bright against the deep gray fabric.

As the minutes stretched on, his focus drew inwards. It wasn’t long before he realized he was sleepy; a pleasant hum in his mind, it surrounded him, blanketed him in gentle comfort.

With a jolt, he realized it wasn’t just coming from himself, but also from Sarah. She radiated a calm, lazy serenity that folded around him like a summer breeze.

It felt nice.

It felt intimate.

And it made it just a little easier to ignore the temptation that had been growing in his mind, the small, nagging thoughts that whispered how wonderful it would feel to lay bare eyes upon her, to hold her close and breathe in the scent of her without darkness cloaking them.

He yearned to meet her gaze without a visor between them.

Perhaps one day, they might.

~*~

Sarah felt sleepy and content. She had never expected to find talking about her abilities to be  _ fun, _ and it was a welcomed change. Krae proved to be a wonderful conversationalist, engaging and quick to pick up on details Sarah hadn’t recognized herself.

They had each had a second cup of  _ sharal’shig, _ and she was almost regretting it as she leaned back from the table and fought down a yawn. Din Djarin had stopped after the first cup, and now she thought she knew why.

“How much longer will you be staying?” Krae questioned. She had picked the Beskar ore up to admire it, and Sarah let her.

Before she could answer, her partner finally spoke up from his extended silence.

“Until we’re no longer needed,” Din supplied.

“Well, if you’re volunteering - Come see me tomorrow. I’ll have work for the both of you.”

“It was wonderful to talk with you,” Sarah said earnestly as the armorer stood. She followed suit with Din, then collected their empty cups one-handed.

“I’ll wash them,” Din offered quietly, and she smiled as she passed them to him.

“Likewise. I look forward to hearing more of your stories,” the armorer answered, and in short order, the ship was private again as the door shut.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun Trivia:
> 
> Piper AR spaceship - I totally made this one. The name is a little easter egg, named after the first small aircraft I had the pleasure of flying in, and piloting. A Piper Arrow, a tiny white thing that barely seats four people.
> 
> Credit bounty amounts - Let me say, I spent way too long doing googling on how credits convert to Earth currency, and what a bounty price would be, how much Beskar is worth, etc. I finally settled on the decision to go with Grogu's original bounty being a rough value of (*touches pinky to corner of mouth*) one miiiiiillion credits worth of Beskar. Din's got one hella expensive set of armor on ;)
> 
> That whole scene with Din and the jetpack?  
> 1) I am forever sad we never see him engage in his jetpack drills as the Armorer in the TV-show instructs him too. I get the feeling it either happened off screen... or as I choose to interpret it for my story, he legit just hasn't had time / hasn't made time to do it ;) Someone's slacking on his homework!  
> 2) It's fun to see Din do something he's not ridiculously amazing at. Suffer, my man.
> 
> Soren is as precious as he is terrifying and I adore him.
> 
> Krae... I didn't plan ahead of time for her to be from the Children of the Watch. It just kinda made sense. I looked back on the writing of her and the few times she had appeared, and realized she's one of the only Mandos I've written who just never took her helmet off, she says This is the Way where others wouldn't, and she proved to be exactly the plot piece I needed for moving things along.
> 
> Her armor is blue because her name makes me think of krakens XD
> 
> Helmet lore is fun. I like the idea that Children of the Watch don't think of the helmet as a separate part of themselves, but literally their face to the world. I feel like there's something missing in this chapter, and as I write more, I will probably revisit it once I know what crucial part is missing... For now, however, this suffices :D
> 
> Chapters are getting longer... entirely unintentional, but they seem to be edging towards the 20-30 page marks now instead of the 10-15.
> 
> Downside: updates might be a little longer between.  
> Upside: More story released at a time ;P
> 
> \---  
> Mando'a Translations:
> 
> Vheh'yaim - "Earth house" see Chapter 9's notes for more info
> 
> Osik - "Shit" Mando'a swear word
> 
> Ret’urcye mhi - Literally "Maybe we'll meet again" coliqually used as "goodbye"
> 
> Vor'e - "Thanks!"
> 
> Vor entye - A serious expression of gratitude. Literally; "I accept a debt"
> 
> Buir - The Mandoa word for "Mom/Dad" used interchangeably. Mando'a has many words that are gender-neutral, and only the context changes it.
> 
> Paak'aran - "Salted Protector" which was suggested by Numi. Basically... the clan of old people XD I like to think Afera and Krae went so long without earning a /specific/ signet that they eventually just became known for being SUPER FUCKING OLD AND BADASS.
> 
> Kute - The name for the Mandalorian bodysuit as an assembled unit.
> 
> Ret' - "Bye" aka a very casual goodbye. Funnily, if you spell it as just Ret without the ' it apparently means "maybe" so I think it's a term based on context... and the lazy slang version of ret'urcye mhi. It amuses me to think Mandos say just like, one word instead of the whole phrase to get a point across.
> 
> Ne'johaa - "Shut up!" I originally had Krae say this to Sarah in Basic, then thought it more suiting she bursts into Mando'a.
> 
> Shig - A beverage, an infusion of basically anything.
> 
> Sharal'shig - my own made up beverage name for a SPECIFIC shig. It means "Lazy beverage" basically
> 
> Su'cuy - casual "hi"
> 
> Jetii - "Jedi"
> 
> Mando'ade - Mando's names for themselves. Aka Mandalorians
> 
> Manda - the Mandalorian afterlife. Major part of their spirituality / religious beliefs.


	21. Conversations

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright lovelies, if you've been dying for more spicy feels with Sarah and Din, this chapter has them.
> 
> Please note that the second work in the series Travel Buddies, "Ad'gotar Edition" has the cut-out smut scene contained in in this chapter. It's got actual (gasp) character development in it + a *little* bit of plot, so I honestly struggled to cut it out at all, but it needed to be done.
> 
> Spicy scene is tagged, and notes are provided <3

The silence was comfortable as Sarah set about shoving the crate back into place where it framed her sleeping pallet, and listened to the sounds of Din Djarin washing their dishware.

“Sabine said we can keep the cups,” Sarah announced, as she realized she hadn’t actually mentioned it yet. When she looked over at her partner, he was examining the dishware in question. After a moment, Din stashed them away into the cabinet, then lifted the panel and shut the entire thing up.

“Kind of her,” he said at last, then turned to walk towards her. “What do you want to talk about?”

Blunt and direct, as she’d learned to associate with him. Sarah liked that about Din.

She took a seat on a chest, then watched as he sat down to take his boots off. He made short work of it, as he hadn’t had the armor plating or munitions on them when Krae had arrived.

“I… Actually, I wanted to talk about helmets,” Sarah admitted.

Her partner went utterly still. Din resumed motion a moment later, and calmly set his boots aside before he turned and swung his legs over the other side of the chest, and the helmet turned to look at her. She caught the subtle cues immediately - there was a slight perk in Din’s shoulders as the black T of his visor tilted towards the blankets. It emphasised the subtle air of expectation around him, almost hopeful, a gentle brush at the edges of her awareness.

Din didn’t need to tell her what he wanted for her to guess, and Sarah’s heart skipped a beat as she nodded with a smile, then removed her own footwear. She glanced to the door of the small sleep chamber Grogu was nestled safe inside, and felt the tiniest pang of guilt mingled with her delight. Guilt, because Sarah felt bad for not wanting to wake him up to join them, which the child would probably like. And delight, because she was pleased to get Din all to herself for a bit.

He settled down on her bed, and Sarah watched as he removed his breastplate then set it aside.

She was surprised when he removed his belt as well, and waited patiently for him to retrieve his blaster pistol and set it beside his leg.

Finally, Din beckoned her over, and Sarah happily settled down between his legs, then leaned back against him with a sigh. Arms wrapped around her waist, his chin settled on her head, and Sarah reveled in the simple contact. His legs weren’t much longer than hers, but his black-stockinged feet were larger.

She wiggled her gray-covered toes, and felt him sigh behind her.

A frown replaced her lazy smile as a familiar tension intruded on the otherwise pleasant atmosphere, and Sarah reached up to place a hand over one of his gloves.

“What’s wrong?” she asked quietly. She didn’t understand why he might be feeling, of all things, guilt.

For several moments, Din Djarin was perfectly silent. She waited patiently, even as concern settled in her chest like a hot coal.

“It feels unequal,” he said after a moment, voice hushed, and Sarah’s brows drew together to match her frown.

“What does?”

“...Us. I’ve seen your face,” he said quietly.

“Everyone has,” she pointed out. “And someday, they won’t anymore.” The thought sent a shiver down her spine. Though they hadn’t talked about it, and he’d yet to pressure her to make a choice one way or another, Sarah couldn’t quite see herself committing half-way to the same Creed he followed.

She… Wanted to match him. And with the newly gained knowledge that they would be able to remove head-coverings in each other’s presence, privately, the thought of someday presenting herself to the world as an armored enigma wasn’t quite so daunting.

It was almost exciting, in a way. Sarah had always liked anonymity, had always kept secrets close to her chest, hidden in plain sight. Taking back her identity from the eyes of the world held a certain appeal, especially after the revelation of her face being sent out on bounty pucks.

Even with those thoughts, Sarah knew she definitely wasn’t ready for a helmet. Not yet. It was still too new, too different, to have fully settled into full acceptance.

Din’s delayed response broke through her thoughts.

“No,” he said quietly, just barely audible through the sound processor that transmitted his voice outside the metal shield he wore. “I’ve…  _ seen _ your face,” he repeated, and Sarah’s eyes widened as she thought she understood. Her mouth dropped open as she struggled to find words to answer his distress.

How could she possibly begin to understand what it was like for him, to see the world behind a dark visor and digital screen displays? To have lived that way for years and years? She could guess, and speculate, but she had no real basis for comparison.

Default won out; Sarah resorted to humor to lighten the mood.

“Well. How many people have seen you shirtless?” she asked, even though it had already felt inadequate the moment her tongue began to form the start of the sentence.

“...Few,” Din answered after a moment, and Sarah bit her lip. He was still tense.

“I’m sorry. I can think of all kinds of ways I could even the tables, but I don't think they’ll actually help you here. I’m… Glad you’ve seen me,” she admitted, and felt his arms tighten around her.

“Why?” he asked after a moment. There was the smallest edge of a plaintive plea in his voice she wasn’t used to hearing, and it tugged at her heartstrings. Sarah closed her eyes and sighed deeply, then utterly relaxed back against him.

She really liked the beverage Sabine had given them.

“Because… Knowing something of what it means to you, it makes it special. It makes me  _ feel _ like I’m… special to you,” she explained. It was almost like a first kiss in its precious intimacy, and the thought gave her an Idea. Sarah smiled as she continued, “And… I think we’re more even than you think. You’ve seen me, and  _ I’ve _ felt your features,” she reminded softly. “Has anyone else touched you?”

He was silent for a moment, then he released her. Sarah opened her eyes to find him in the process of tugging his gloves off. Her smile softened as a calloused hand came up to brush knuckles across her cheek, and he rested the flat of them against her skin, warm even against her flushed face.

“No,” Din finally answered. Sarah ignored the borderline-possessive thrill the confirmation sent tingling down her spine.

“Does that help?” she asked softly.

“...Yes.”

A peaceful pause as she leaned into his touch, and Din gently stroked his thumb against her temple. Sarah hummed quietly.

_ “Beerud Burcyan,” _ she said after a moment, and his hand stilled.

_ “Briirud,” _ he corrected quietly. The error didn’t quite kill Sarah’s moment of giddiness.

“Why did you pick that dance to teach me?” she wondered.

When she felt Din reach up, and heard the unmistakable sound of his helmet being removed, Sarah stopped breathing. He set it down on her lap, and she swallowed thickly as she placed her hands on the sides to steady it, and then his covered hers. The visor faced away from her, and she stared at the familiar back of smooth beskar, adorned plainly with a single ridge over the top of the dome, and the small row of slots in the back, either some kind of vent or a port for inserting tools.

Her heart skipped a beat, and Sarah finally found her breath again with a hitched, quiet stutter. It was amazing how intimate such deceptively simple gestures were with Din.

This time, when his chin settled atop her head, it was a complete contact, with none of the cold press of metal that usually edged it. Sarah relaxed back into him with a content sigh, and reveled in the closeness.

She was glad his helmet wasn’t buffed to a mirrored polish, even though it had a reflective shine. It was nice not to have to clench her eyes shut.

She should probably just make herself a blindfold.

As her thoughts wandered, Sarah abruptly realized he hadn’t answered her yet, and she slipped a hand out from under his. Din let her, and she reached up to find his face with the back of her fingers, and smiled as she found his jaw, scratchy against her skin with a light stubble. She followed it to his cheek, past his ear, then finally threaded her fingers deep into his thick, loosely curled hair, and curled them through the short strands.

“It was the only one that felt right,” Din finally said into the silence without managing to break the peaceful hush, and Sarah closed her eyes as she listened to the sound of his rich voice without the distortion of his equipment mangling it.

“If I close my eyes, can I kiss you?” she asked, and smiled at the soft noise Din made deep in his throat.

_ “Yes,” _ he answered emphatically, then picked his helmet up off her thighs and set it aside.

Sarah swallowed thickly.

There was something she wanted to know before she let things get pleasantly fuzzy.

“How much am I allowed to tease you?” she asked quietly. “Because I’d  _ like _ to, but I don’t… Want to actually torment you,” she admitted, and felt his hitch of breath; just a sharp jerk of the torso she rested against, with the faintest hiss of air through his nose. Sarah was positive she wouldn’t have been able to hear it if he had still been wearing his headcover.

“I…” Din trailed off, frozen stiff behind her.

Sarah waited patiently. With his neck pressed to the back of her head, she both heard and  _ felt _ him swallow.

The seconds dragged into first one minute, then two, and he still struggled for words. Sarah closed her eyes and pushed herself up, then turned around. It didn’t take her long to settle herself comfortably on his lap.

~*~

🌶️  **~* Spicy Scene ahead *~** 🌶️

_ Explicit _ couple’s boundaries talk & ridiculously adorable cuddles warning tag. 

This is very important to Sarah and Din's developing relationship, however it is also NSFW.

**The smutty portion has been cut and posted to a SEPARATE STORY** \- Chapter Two of the second work in the Travel Buddies series, "Ad'gotar edition"

**Notes at the end of scene with plot-relevant deets.**

They were nearly nose-to-nose, and Sarah’s eyes were closed as Din trusted her to keep them. His hands rested on the curve of her hips, and her arms were loosely draped around his shoulders and neck, slender wrists wedged between the collar of his shirt and the metal wall at his back.

Din Djarin didn’t know how to answer her, with her warm weight settled over his thighs, and a playful smile on her lips.

He was passionately glad that Sarah held  _ still. _ This was comfortable. This was safe. He could still think straight.

Mostly.

“We should talk about physical boundaries,” Sarah bluntly clarified into the silence, and all at once Din felt relief, because he now understood exactly what she was asking.

He could work with that.

He reached up with his right hand and ran it over her hair, felt the distant tickle of the short strands as they bent beneath his calloused palm, and his lover hummed happily.

Din Djarin opened his mouth to answer her… and realized he wasn’t sure what his boundaries were, beyond the most obvious, and she already respected that.

He knew he desired her, desired to touch her, to be touched in return. He knew he wanted more than kisses and holding hands… Yet he wasn’t certain how far would be appropriate to go. He was painfully aware that he’d rushed into this with her, and the consequences hadn’t yet fully set in. And they wouldn’t, not until he brought her home, and judgement would be faced.

He hadn’t broken his Oath, yet he knew they skirted a dangerous line. The fact that danger held a certain kind of  _ excitement _ to it was a sensation he couldn’t ignore as completely as he felt he  _ should. _

That she had fully committed to the path of the Mandalore was significant, and Din had every faith Sarah would see it through.

Yet still, it weighed on him; just how much could they do together so soon, without damning them both?

“...What are yours?” he asked finally, and shifted his weight to a more comfortable position.

Sarah’s answering smile did dangerous things to his composure. Slow and sly, it had a flavor of mischief Din quickly decided he could get used to seeing. He liked that she was so careful in the ways she teased him; he liked that he felt… safe with her. Even in the middle of what felt like a flavor of danger.

He trusted that she wouldn’t let things get out of hand, that she wouldn’t intentionally coax him to do something he wasn’t certain of, or actively against.

He trusted her to protect him from his own overwhelming need, because he knew he desired nothing less than to make her fully his, consequences be damned. And he also knew neither of them were ready for that.

It didn’t stop him from  _ wanting _ it. It didn’t stop him from wondering what it’d be like to meet her eyes, face-to-face, without a screen between them. To see the striking, brilliant ice blue of her gaze as everyone else around them could, yet he was barred from.

“My boundary lines are probably a lot more open than yours are,” Sarah teased. “I’m going to take a guess and say we’re not going to be all-out fucking any time soon.”

In the face of her frankness, Din closed his eyes and resisted the urge to make an embarrassing noise as a  _ vivid _ image flashed across his mind. His answering nod was a short, jerky bob of his head, and he immediately felt like a fool as he remembered she couldn’t see him.

“Yes,” he answered hoarsely. “I mean - No. We’re… We’re not going that far,” he clarified, and felt just a tad lightheaded. Din was hyper-aware of Sarah shifting her weight as the firmly plush muscles of her thighs settled more evenly over his lap, and opened his eyes to find her smiling shyly at him.

“There’s… a lot we can explore before that, in the meantime,” she suggested softly.

He liked the sound of that.

Utterly out of his element, Din adjusted his hold on her to be more comfortable, then closed his eyes and rested his forehead against hers. Sarah’s sweet-smelling breaths touched lightly against his skin, puffed over his nose and lips, and tickled the light stubble he needed to shave.

“What do you have in mind?” he asked, and ignored the deep, husky quality to his voice. Judging from her soft approving hum he got in response, she noticed.

“That celebration I offered is still on the table, for starters,” Sarah said in a quiet voice, sounding… hopeful.

Din’s brows drew together as his eyes opened.

“What celebration?” he wondered, unable to look away from Sarah’s lovely features.

Her lips touched briefly against his nose in a fleeting kiss that made warmth blossom in his chest, and he ached to meet them in a far less chaste exchange. Din’s head had immediately started to tilt without his permission, and he barely restrained himself to give her a chance to actually answer him.

“I’ve  _ never _ met a man who forgot about an offer of a blow-job,” Sarah announced bluntly, laughter in her voice. “You’re adorable, Din.”

The strangled noise that lodged in his throat was both unexpected and difficult to smother. He remembered, now. Vividly. He was already mildly aroused by their position, and the topic of conversation, but now he felt his pants grow uncomfortably tight as his breath hitched.

“That’s… You don’t--” Din swallowed thickly, then groaned quietly and drew her into a tight hug. He settled his chin on her head, and felt her smile press against the edge of his jaw as he heaved a ragged sigh, robbed of speech.

She was right. He  _ had _ forgotten, if only because it had happened weeks ago, during their first kiss. They’d had so many other more important matters to worry about, and he’d forcibly put it out of his mind.

“I  _ want _ to touch you,” Sarah whispered, mindful not to let her voice carry. “And I want to be touched by you. Only you,” she added softly, then dropped her arms to wrap them around his waist, her palms sliding down his torso as she did.

Din’s breath hitched again as he shifted his weight, hyper-aware of the growing distraction in his lap, torn between glad that she wasn’t sitting close enough to feel it, and desperately wanting to pull her hips close so that she _ would. _ The arousal mingled in intoxicating ways with the softer, deeper emotions Sarah evoked in him.

He’d never known he could feel like this. He’d certainly never expected to come even remotely close.

He liked it. A lot.

Din’s hand rubbed up and down her narrow back as he felt the curve of her spine, and he tried to pull his focus together. He thought he wanted the same things as her, but without having any experience to draw off of, he wasn’t actually sure what it was she might want from  _ him. _

So he did the sensible thing; he asked her.

And she offered to show him.

  
~*~

Sarah quietly led the way through the ship, practically tip-toeing past the sleeping chamber Grogu napped inside, and didn’t mind one bit going first up the ladder. Din Djarin’s raised helmet might be inscrutable as he waited patiently for her to ascend, straight backed and hands calmly at his sides, but she wasn’t fooled.

If he wasn’t eying up the view of her ass, he wasn’t truly interested in her, and she  _ knew _ he was.

She reached the top, and heard him follow after as she crossed into the storage room. The air was cool as the ship always was, but it no longer bothered her in the warm layers of her uniform.

Almost  _ too _ warm, from the flush of excitement and desire as it creeped down her neck, pooled in her belly, and made her hot and bothered as she looked around the room.

Din shut the blast doors behind him, then lingered in front of them as he watched her take in the boxy space. There was a single bench built into the wall on her right as she faced him, the generator room’s closed access behind her, and both side-walls had sealed storage compartments built into them.

It wasn’t the most comfortable area for this, but it offered the most privacy she knew they were able to get, and it came without the risk of Grogu walking in on them if he woke up from his nap early, which she  _ absolutely did not want. _

There was an unexpectedly deep intimacy in just standing here with him, even without physical contact; alone together, with his emotions bared to her as they smothered the confines of the small room, Sarah took a moment to appreciate their unusual bond. She still had no explanation for why it had formed in the first place, but she had come to like it.

Ideas formed in her head of what they could do here, and Sarah’s breaths came in short, accelerated puffs as a giddy rush of adrenaline coursed through her limbs.

Din lifted his wrist to no doubt hit the lights, and Sarah jolted.

“Wait,” she blurted, a flush to her cheeks. She wasn’t ready for the room to be dark again yet.

She wanted to see him. She wanted him to see  _ her. _

Din paused mid-motion, and his inscrutable helmet tilted a fraction as he regarded her silently through his dark visor.

He didn’t voice his question, but she knew this man; at least well enough to know he was hoping for an explanation. She liked to think she’d recognize that even without his curiosity tickling across the edges of her awareness like a ghostly caress.

A memory stirred, and Sarah remembered her involuntary hurt when he’d asked her about the whip marks on her back. Had he... stopped asking her questions because he’d noticed? Warm fuzzies of appreciation warred with the weight of guilt, and she found the loose smirk on her face softened into something gentler, almost tender.

She loved the way Din Djarin treated her; he was mindful, without being presumptuous and making over-assumptions. Attentive, without being excessive; she had never seen him as overbearing or possessive.... For the later, at least not in ways she didn’t enjoy. Sarah liked the subtle ways he acted on his claim to her. On her claim to him.

And she appreciated that he was always so very respectful of her personal space, both metaphorically and literally.

The brutal training sessions didn’t count, even though the errant thought gave her a flash of humor through serious ruminations.

Deciding to be bold, Sarah shifted her stance and crooked a finger at him.

“Come here,” she ordered, and held her breath as she waited to see how he would react.

Din approached her without hesitation, and Sarah bit her lip as her smile stretched.

“First things first,” she began, then reached up to put a hand over his heart, and took a step closer to him. He was warm beneath her fingers, and she splayed them over the dense padding of his vest. “Safe word. Something to say to call a halt to what we’re doing if… things get too intense, or one of us is uncomfortable. A full stop,” she clarified.

Din’s hand came up to cup her cheek, and Sarah leaned into his touch with a pleased sigh.

“I’ll tell you if we need to stop,” he stated, though she caught the hesitance in his roughened voice, and wondered if he trusted  _ himself _ to do that. Sarah filed the observation away to keep note of, just in case. She was confident she’d have enough clarity of mind and restraint to protect both their needs if the situation called for it.

“Sometimes when you say ‘stop,’ you really mean ‘yes, please, keep doing that,’” Sarah revealed. Her smile stretched into a playful smirk as he went utterly still. “Didn’t make sense to me when I first heard it, either, but believe me… You’ll understand when the time comes. Besides - It conflicts. You might outright ask me  _ not _ to stop. We need a word that won’t come up under any other circumstance,” she explained with more calm than she felt.

There had been a subtle strain of tension lingering around Din since this discussion had started, and she was pleased to both feel and see it ebb away as his shoulders relaxed, and his aura took on a captivating intensity.

He was comfortable with her. She liked that.

Din Djarin’s throat bobbed as he swallowed, and Sarah patiently waited for his response.

“Weapon?” he suggested awkwardly, and Sarah winked at him.

“Nope. Because I would  _ love _ to play with your sword,” she teased, and delighted at the muffled noise he made, the way his shoulders drew up, and how he leaned just a tiny bit towards her. The hand at her cheek dropped to her shoulder as she continued, “Imperial? I can’t think of anything more un-arousing than a stinking Imp.”

Even  _ suggesting _ it somewhat killed the mood, and she mused that maybe it was a little  _ too _ effective.

“...Calamari,” Din offered instead, and Sarah raised her brows.

“That works. But… why?” It seemed so utterly random, except for the fact they were on a planet that happened to be known for its cephalopod inhabitants.

Din’s neck scrunched back just a tad, and paired with his next tone of voice, Sarah wondered if he was grimacing.

“I don’t like seafood.”

She felt a silly sort of delight in learning a new detail about him, and it took her a moment to properly focus on the important matters at hand and get over the giddiness.

He made her feel like a love-struck fool.

Sarah thought maybe she was.

“Calamari it is,” she agreed, then began to casually inch her hand down his torso in increments. She pressed just hard enough to make certain he could feel the sensation, and watched the way his chest hitched with newly shortened breaths. 

The hand on her shoulder tightened its grip as her fingertips brushed low over his stomach.

“I want to see you,” she admitted. “Can I take this off?” she asked, then tugged at the fabric of his shirt, beneath the layers of armor padding he wore. If it was anything like her own outfit, and judging from what she could see of the pieces visible, there were likely at least two or three layers above the shirt itself.

The number really didn’t matter. Whatever it was, it was too many.

“What about you?” he asked hoarsely, and Sarah’s heart skipped a beat. The tone of his voice suggested he wasn’t asking for an equal return, but rather something a little different. She could hear the edge of uncertain guilt in his voice, even as she felt the shift in the air around her.

That was when she realized his emotions were more clear to her than they had been in recent days, when she had actively strove not to pry into his state of being.

Was it different now, because she wanted to know? Because she wanted to be closer to him?

Or was it some other reason?

Sarah’s distraction meant it took her a moment to answer him, and she wrapped her arms around his waist, low over his hips… then dipped her hands down to settle them on his nicely shaped ass as she stepped forward, and pressed herself flush against the length of his body.

She smirked as she felt the hard line of his arousal against her lower belly.

“If you’re still wondering what I want  _ you _ to do, I want you to touch me,” Sarah answered boldly. “There’s no-where you can put your hands I won’t welcome. I want to know how badly you desire me; I want you to show me. I want to  _ feel _ it,” she explained. She wondered if he’d been hoping she might give more specific instructions on how to proceed, but that would come  _ later. _ First, she wanted to see what he could come up with on his own. It was far more fun to correct and redirect than it was to tell him exactly what to do.

Sarah wanted to encourage Din to explore her, to embrace this aspect of their relationship, to grow comfortable with it. She had never been with a virgin man before, and she was painfully aware just how delicate the situation could be, how overwhelming such new sensations were.

She’d been in his position before, through the handful of lovers she’d had over the years before she’d given up on pursuing a romance. Before she’d met him, and her world had been turned upside-down in the best of ways, even though there were arguably some pretty dangerous and terrible side-effects.

Sarah wanted this experience to be a good one for the both of them.

Her eyes fluttered closed of their own accord as Din settled one hand low on her hip, and the other on her shoulder lifted to cup her face. His fingers flexed, and she felt the palm pressed to her body begin to slide behind her, then hesitate as if he were shy of touching her where she could guess he wanted to.

She couldn’t wait for him to surrender his composure and restraint, and show her the passion she knew he felt, a simmering boil of lust and yearning that made it progressively harder to think straight.

“...I want to kiss you,” he murmured.

“Anywhere you’d like to,” she teased.

_ “Sarah.” _

She liked the way he growled her name; half in exasperation, and half in that deliciously husky, needy rumble she could really get used to hearing.

Din reached around and caged her in his arms, and the lights of the ship went dark. When he quietly ordered her to close her eyes, Sarah confirmed she already had. She let go of him only so he could move to put his helmet down, and heard the soft click of metal on metal.

It was strange to be suspended in darkness, only able to perceive her lover by the sound of his movements, and the blanketing essence that surrounded her.

As Sarah thought about it, she realized it was more intimate in some regards than if she could see his face. There was still a depth to this hidden, almost forbidden interaction that wasn’t unlike the bridge forged through direct eye-contact, yet still distinctly different.

And there were other benefits, too.

Like her hyper-awareness to Din’s every action as her senses strained to pick up on even the slightest of details; the way his calloused fingers sent delicious shivers down her spine, even though his touch at the moment was as innocent as finding her face in the dark. He cupped her cheek, and Sarah hummed her approval as his other hand framed the other side of her head.

This time when he kissed her, Din Djarin didn’t miss like the first time they’d made out in this darkened room.

His mouth was hot against hers, demanding and purposeful, as he stole her breath away with the slow press of his lips and the tip of his tongue as he explored her taste.

Sarah hadn’t expected such a devastatingly thorough approach from him, and hazily remembered how attentive he’d been during their first kiss, and the scant handful they’d shared since. He paid attention to her reactions, and acted on it.

Or maybe she was just attracted to Din enough that it wouldn’t have mattered if he’d been the sloppiest, wettest kisser with teeth-grinding carelessness.

Whatever it was… Sarah liked it.

When her back bumped up against hard metal, she realized he’d walked her across the room without her even noticing they were moving. Sarah’s hands were on his chest, and he had one in her short, wispy hair and the other on her hip as Din guided her to exactly where he wanted her.

Sarah drew breath to protest when he abruptly pulled back and left her hanging, then quickly forgave him as his mouth trailed kisses over her jaw, and he nipped her neck, just a light graze of his teeth against flushed skin.

It was suddenly much too hot in the room, and there were too many layers of clothes between herself and his hands as Din brought both of them to slide down her ribs, along the dip of her waist. Sarah wrapped hers around his neck and let him explore, then sucked in a breath as his thumbs pressed hard against the padding of her torso, and traced the edges of her breasts.

Just enough she could feel the distinct contact.

“Help me out of this,” she demanded, and grabbed his wrists to guide them to the thin and flat, square buckles that secured her vest snug to her chest.

Sarah felt his fingers deftly work open the closures, and groaned as he tilted his head and pressed a firm kiss underneath her jaw, then sucked in a pained breath as he continued to trail them along her skin.

Din immediately stopped and withdrew.

“Sarah?” Concern cut through his husky voice.

“Burnmark,” she reminded him breathlessly, and ignored the sting of her provoked injury. “Don’t stop.” Stars above, she didn’t want him to stop.

Din’s lips returned in a different spot, only to leave her skin again as he pulled the first vest up and over Sarah’s head.

For once, he had the advantage on her in this intimate interaction; Din Djarin was far more familiar with the layers of the  _ Kute _ as he stripped her of each piece until she was down to the base shirt, while Sarah’s own fingers fumbled to find the closures for his wretchedly obscuring clothes, without the aid of sight. She wanted to  _ feel _ him. Desperately.

She grunted her appreciation when his hands brushed hers aside, and she heard the rustle of cloth and the soft clicks of buckles and snaps as he began to strip.

While Din was occupied, Sarah removed her belt and carefully dropped it to the floor so it would land quietly, then slipped a hand in her pants to awkwardly fumble for the crotch-strap of her gambeson.

She jolted when strong fingers closed around her wrist, and almost opened her eyes on pure reflex.

Badly startled at her near mistake, she quickly clenched them harder shut, and blushed violently as Din slowly drew her arm up. The brush of friction when she’d reached in had been pleasant, but not distracting. With  _ him _ guiding the movement, Sarah found it suddenly very hard to breath.

“I need to--”

“I’ll do that,” he rumbled.

Words failed in the best of ways, so Sarah only leaned back against the wall, then found his head so she could curl fingers in his hair and steady herself. Din kneeled down on the ground in front of her, and she sucked in a breath as his warm palms settled over her hips, then slowly traced their curve.

She liked where this was going.

🌶️  **~* Spicy Scene end *~** 🌶️

Sarah and Din had Happy Adult Time™. They established some healthy boundaries for the romantic side of their relationship. Din is  _ technically _ still a virgin ;P

Both learned cute and/or important details about each other that has deepened their understanding of one-another.

Sarah promised to tell him the story of the whip-scars on her back, and learned some lore about Mando helmets regarding marriage + stories behind some of Din’s scars. Sarah also noticed that she was able to very clearly read Din's emotions far more than usual, yet didn't know what prompted the change.

~*~

When Din Djarin finally crawled into his own pallet to sleep for the night, freshly showered and his  _ Kute _ laundered, he reflected that he had never gone to bed feeling so utterly content and relaxed.

And it had little to do with the lingering effects of the  _ sharal’shig _ .

Grogu had been sound asleep when he checked on the Foundling, and the child’s tiny, sleepy snores were a comforting background noise as Din settled himself down on the firm cushion.

Between one breath and the next, he fell asleep.

His eyes opened the very next instant, except that couldn’t be right, because he felt well-rested. He was sitting up before he even registered he’d started moving, and the first thing he saw was… Sarah.

She stood at the opened door of his shared sleeping compartment, amusement on her face, her left hand still on the door control panel and out of sight. Her sling hung empty around her neck.

“Wow. I  _ did _ tire you out,” she teased. “Going to get up this time?”

This time?

After Din found Grogu’s hammock empty, he dropped his gaze to see the child peering at him with perked ears, wide awake, settled in the crook of Sarah’s good arm, just barely out of sight behind the edge of the small entryway’s frame. He didn’t remember waking up for her to collect him.

“...How late is it?” he wondered, incredulous that he’d apparently slept in. He  _ never _ overslept, not unless he’d spent the previous day at death’s door.

“Not too late for breakfast, or for a curious Marrek to ask after his new best friend. I still can’t tell if you guys hate each other or are in a bromance.”

“We’re not friends,” Din grunted. Whatever the kriff a  _ bromance _ was, he didn’t want to know, and it definitely wasn’t the answer.

“I’m off to take Grogu to lessons in a bit,” Sarah announced.

She stepped back to give him space to exit, and as Din shoved himself out to the edge and stood, he realized he… wanted something.

What, he wasn’t sure.

But he reached out and put his gloved palm to her cheek, and sighed at the sight of her gentled expression. Then, his gaze dropped to Grogu, and he contemplated.

After a moment, he worked the glove off his right hand, then settled the bare palm on his Foundling’s head.

Wide black eyes blinked up at him, and the child’s ears perked adorably as he burbled happily. Grogo then reached up with both his hands, and quipped something, short and sharp.

Din blinked.

Did the kid just...?

_ “Iba’nurr,”  _ Grogu repeated, tiny fingers curling as his claws prickled against Din’s wrist.  _ “Ouir!” _

_ “Buir,” _ Sarah corrected with a sparkle in her eyes, and the child’s head tilted under Din’s hand to peer up at her. Sarah exaggerated the movement of her lips to sound out the word.

The Foundling’s next attempt at speech was more successful, but he couldn’t quite form the  _ ‘boo’ _ noise in the  _ Mando’a _ word for addressing a parent.

_ “Oo-ir!” _

_ “Buir,” _ Sarah calmly repeated.

Din wondered if he was still asleep, lost in a wonderful dream. He felt lightheaded, heart clutched in a vice grip of emotions that were at once elating and painful, both heartwarming and bittersweet.

The kid had just called him  _ dad. _

~*~

“You’re going to make  _ me _ dizzy if you keep spiraling into a puddle of goo,” Sarah fondly chastised her partner, as she and Grogu basked in the decidedly brilliant dazzle of emotion that radiated from the otherwise entirely stoic man. There was a touch of something sharp and unpleasant at the very edges that concerned her, and she thought she knew why.

Grogu wouldn’t be theirs forever.

But until then… He was. Life was too short to skimp. Krae had been right on that count, and Sarah took the elder’s advice to heart.

So she tightened her hold, literally and figuratively, consequences be damned.

Din Djarin finally withdrew his hand, slowly, as Grogu tried to keep hold of him until he held the last knuckle of Din’s index finger.

“Be good at lessons, kid. Grogu,” Din amended, his voice hoarse. “I’ll see you when they’re over.”

Sarah couldn’t stop a giggle as the child  _ raspberried _ at him. She didn’t scold him this time, because there was a playfulness to the interaction that she felt was acceptable.

“Soooo is he up yet?” Marrek’s muffled voice called from outside the ship. This time, Sarah did laugh.

Din sighed.

“I’ll fend the bard off while you take care of morning refreshment,” Sarah offered with a smile. “See you, Din.”

Now that she knew he specifically liked it when she spoke his name - his  _ real _ name - she had every intention of using it as often as she could.

_ “Ret’, _ Sarah,” he returned.

As she walked down the lowering ramp before it had fully connected with the ground, Sarah blocked Marrek’s path to the ship when he would have walked right up to it.

“Stay off the ship. Ten minutes, then he’s all yours,” she declared, loud enough she knew Din would hear.

“Man, you are  _ way _ too smiley this morning to be so bossy. Fine,” Marrek agreed, voice distorted slightly from his helmet. Sarah’s smile twitched into a smirk as she left the ramp, and it immediately lifted up to shut. Marrek huffed.

“I thought you liked women who gave orders?” she quipped.

“Bah. Only when I get to throw them in the mud afterwards.”

“Soren thinks I’ll be able to toss  _ you _ into it next time we meet,” Sarah declared, feeling almost a little recklessly bold as she did so. It felt like boasting.

“We’ll see about that. I don’t want to have to wait twenty years before I see the infamous Moff-killer again,” Marrek answered, and she could  _ hear _ the smirk in his voice.

“Agh! He’s not  _ dead _ yet!”

_ “Yet,” _ Marrek conceded cheekily, and Sarah left him behind with a shake of her head.

_ “Oo-iur,” _ Grogu burbled at her, and her heart got all melty inside all over again. She’d spent the morning with him working on words after a simple breakfast together, and a short telepathy practice that had revealed his desire for what he  _ really _ wanted to say.

It was a good start to the morning.

~*~

It was  _ not _ a good start to the morning.

Boba Fett darkly contemplated the fact they were wasting a ridiculous amount of fuel in his thorough search of the terrain he felt most likely to be hospitable for a ship as large as the Razor Crest to land, and still be within range of the kriffing ore in the mountains.

If he could just  _ find _ the bloody thing, it’d be worth it.

Boba Fett hated  _ ifs. _

When a beep sounded, his heart surged as a rush of adrenaline and desperate hope filled him, then sank when he realized it wasn’t the tracking beacon’s cuff that had sounded an alert. He glanced to the monitor on his left, then flipped a switch to bring the radar into better focus.

Naturally, it didn’t really work. The screen flickered and sputtered with wild lines of static as it struggled to give a clear reading. In a brief spurt of clarity, he caught the symbol for an approaching spacecraft, several miles out.

As the whooshing rush of another set of engines sounded nearby, Boba jerked his gaze back out the cockpit window and corrected the faulty information; it was nearly upon him. A sleek, narrow ship rocketed over the ground, keeping low above the trees, then banked sharply as they no doubt spotted his spacecraft.

Boba didn’t need to give chase to know there was no hope of catching up. The  _ Slave 1 _ had many functions, but speed wasn’t it’s strong suit, especially with the power of it’s main drives converted partially into supporting its extensive weapons system. He had tangled with a handful of that class of ship, and unless he had the advantage of surprise, it had always ended with Boba’s quarry escaping.

“Fennec. Did you get a heading on them?” he asked gruffly, painfully aware he’d have been able to catch it himself if he’d not been distracted by the useless radar.

“They came up over the ridge by the rock spire Eastwards,” she answered.

“What was that thing? I’ve never seen a ship like that before,” Ruselm wondered. Their chatty companion didn’t know how to keep silent. If it wasn’t for the fact he occasionally had something actually useful to say, Boba had strongly considered gagging him just to get the boy to shut up for a while.

“Piper-AR,” he answered shortly.

“Never heard of it,” Ruselm answered.

That wasn’t surprising to Boba. There weren’t many of them left.

Much like his own ship.

He checked the map puck he’d secured to the console. They would have to leave the pattern he’d worked out for searching the land, but he had a good feeling about this.

Mind made up, he steered them in the new direction.

~*~

Sabine was more than ready for a break. Her morning had started early - much too early - with a promise to trade places with Numi in helping Jahr get his ship ready to go. It was a ridiculously good trade for the comm-links she’d commissioned, and she almost felt like she’d cheated him out of a fair deal.  _ Almost. _

The nasty bump on her head because Jahr had dropped a socket wrench on it when he’d been fixing the loose mounting of one of the old, long-barreled cannons on his ship had hurt. A  _ lot. _

If she’d been wearing her helmet, Sabine ruefully noted that it wouldn’t have been an issue, but she’d been busy eating.

“You look like someone dragged you through the kitchens on a thirteen hour shift,” Mars commented, and Sabine looked over her shoulder to see the woman as she invited herself into Sabine’s  _ vheh’yaim _ .

“I feel like it, too. Do you have any idea how hard it is to reconfigure the hyperdrive on a ship as old as dirt?” Sabine complained, then put two hands to her back as she stretched. Mars tutted at the loud crackling noise that sounded off, and Sabine sighed blissfully. That felt  _ much _ better.

“No, I never had much mind for the mechanical things. That’s  _ your _ specialty, dear. Now, then - We’re about packed up at the kitchens. I’ve got the boys helping to bring the frame down, and we’ll have it all bundled up by tonight. I was told you wanted to see me for going over the inventory - Who still needs rations for the trip?”

“We’ve got six families who are going to need some food, and Dorian’s requested an additional supply, because he’ll be setting up with Soren and the others right away. He’s not keen for a repeat of last time,” Sabine added dryly, and her company snorted.

“Well if they hadn’t  _ wasted _ an entire crate of salted meat, they wouldn’t have had any issues.”

Sabine shrugged.

“At least they killed the thing that ate it.”

“Too bad it wasn’t  _ edible _ by the time they were done,” Mars groused.

“Numbers?” Sabine prompted impatiently. She wasn’t in the mood for Mars’ complaining.

“Yes, yes. I’ve got three boxes of grain, six cartons of the dried harvest, and one barrel of  _ uj’ayl _ left. We’ll need to make more, it’ll be done by the time we reach the new site. I can give them raw ingredients, and I’ve got one parcel of finished  _ haashun _ we can split between them.”

Sabine nodded thoughtfully. That wasn’t as much as she’d been hoping for, but they’d make do. Fortunately, though it wasn’t great, it wasn’t dire, either. She knew Mars had more food stocked, but most of it was raw ingredients for dishes that wouldn’t be as easy to prepare during space-travel.

Beyond that, most families had more than enough provisions to tide them over, and Sabine knew some would be making stops elsewhere to either hunt or purchase additional supplies for themselves, or for the covert at large.

As she considered how best to portion them out, her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of someone approaching.

Sabine knew the sound of those heavy boots anywhere.

“Yo, what’s up?” she asked as she walked past Mars, and brushed aside the tarp in the doorway.

_ “Su cuy’gar, _ Sabine,” Kicker greeted. There was none of his usual cheer in the Twi’lek’s voice, and she didn’t need to see his face to know he was probably frowning. “We’ve got a problem.”

“And I thought today was going to be boring. What’s wrong?” Sabine prompted.

“Vercah’s reported a sighting from Jahr. That ship they saw in the port, with the bald guy looking for Din? Jahr spotted it flying past BKR.”

Sabine grimaced. That wasn’t close enough to be cause for panic, but it was still  _ much _ closer than she’d like.

The question was - how had he known to come this far? Was it dumb luck, or had he somehow acquired information on the covert?

“Is Vercah still here?” Sabine asked, and ignored Mars as the woman stepped up behind her.

“No, he’s already flown back to the comm station in case Jahr tries to radio in again,” Kicker confirmed. Sabine swore softly. She’d have to go there herself if she wanted to speak to him.

“...What’s BKR?” Mars asked curiously.

“Big Kriffing Rock, fourth checkpoint on the flight path out,” Sabine supplied absent-mindedly. “Kicker, have you talked with Afera or Dorian?”

“Nope, came straight to you.”

“Go relay the message on to them, then meet back with me at the tavern. Bring them with,” Sabine ordered. Kicker nodded once and immediately turned away, and she pivoted to face the purple armored woman next to her. “Mars, get those supplies dropped within the hour - sort it out yourself with Shar. Inform Zap to cancel lessons; I want all the children off-world by sundown.”

“What about Sarah and Din?” Mars prompted, and Sabine furrowed her brows. It wasn’t like the woman to single someone out, but she supposed the woman had probably taken an interest in the couple’s foundling, Grogu, after personally babysitting him.

“Focus on your job. I’ll take care of them.”

“Alright,” Mars agreed, and followed Sabine out of the  _ vheh’yaim. _

It didn’t take Sabine long to find Sarah. She was engrossed in conversation with Luek at his dismantled  _ vheh’yaim _ , in the middle of what looked like a friendly goodbye.

Sabine interrupted them without preamble.

“Sarah,” she called, and both heads turned to face her as their conversation broke off. “You and your family need to leave; the sooner, the better. Bald-guy’s been spotted at the fourth flight checkpoint. Luek,” she added as she turned to him, and was pleased at the convenience of having him right here, though she’d been planning on finding him after her coming moot. “Can you work on rescheduling a new flight path? I’m off to meet with Afera and Dorian now.”

The black helmet dipped in a nod.

“I’ll come with,” he offered, and Sabine accepted with a return of the short gesture.

“Do we need to wait to go until that’s settled?” Sarah interrupted, and Sabine glanced at her.

She had seen her friend’s wide-eyed shock when the blunt announcement to leave had been made, and it hadn’t taken long for Sarah to compose herself. Straight shoulders, proud chin, tensed for movement without being wound-up overly tight.

Sabine eyed the glimpse of the purple bruising and angry red burn on her neck, and smirked.

“We’ll want you to run a different flight path, just to be on the safe side. I trust Din to figure it out.”

“Then I’m saying goodbye now,” Sarah said as she extended a hand, and Sabine moved past Luek to grasp her friend by the wrist in a firm hold, then stepped forward and wrapped an arm around Sarah’s shoulders in a brief hug.

_ “Ret’urcye mhi, _ Moff-killer,” Sabine said with a grin

“How do I say ‘go fuck yourself’ in  _ Mando’a?”  _ Sarah asked.

Sabine laughed.

_ “Slana’pir,” _ Luek supplied placidly.

Sarah returned the  _ incredibly _ foul send-off, then followed it up with a proper goodbye. Sabine shared a final wave with her, then struck off with Luek in tow.

~*~

It didn’t take Sarah long to jog through the covert, though she did have to duck once to avoid being hit in the head by poles when someone turned with them over their shoulder.

They called an apology which she acknowledged without stopping, and in short order found herself at the lecture site. It was set away in a different area than it had been during daily life before teardown began, to keep away from the noise and chaos of teardown.

Four instructors stood with as many classes, each spaced several yards apart, with most of the children grouped together by age range. There were a few out of place with those around them - teenagers mingled with some of the younger adolescents - according to experience level.

Sarah had participated in each class during her stay, bounced between the different lessons as needed.

Even as she slowed town to walk towards the group she knew Grogu to be in, she recognized Mars in her brilliant purple armor as the woman cut behind the teachers and went straight towards Zap.

The yellow helmet turned Mars’ way, and Sarah quietly stepped between students to the young Twi’lek who kept watch over Grogu. She was entreated to curious glances and a few open stares as the students recognized something had changed, and lost their decorum. With Zap’s lecture interrupted to speak to Mars, Sarah couldn’t blame them for letting their attention wander.

_ “Su’cuy, _ Zera. I need to take Grogu,” Sarah announced quietly as she knelt down beside the two. Both watched her with smiles and bright eyes.

“Is everything ok?” Zera whispered, as she relinquished her hold on the Foundling in her lap. Sarah slipped her arm out of its sling to pick him up securely, and smiled warmly as his tiny fingers curled against the stiff fabric of her vest. His head rested lightly against her shoulder.

“Someone is looking for us that we don’t want to meet,” Sarah explained carefully. “So we have to go. Thank you for watching him,” she added, and reached out with her splinted arm to settle her hand lightly on the girl’s shoulder. Sarah was pleasantly startled when Zera rose up onto her knobbly knees and wrapped her arms around the both of them in a hug.

“I’ll miss you,” the child mumbled.

“You’re going?” another voice asked, and Sarah looked over Zera’s head to find more eyes on her.

“Yes. It’s time we moved on,” she answered the young boy gently.

Everyone turned forward at the sound of two sharp claps, as Zap called them to order. Mars cut away from the yellow-armored instructor to speak to the next teacher.

“Listen up,” Zap began, and planted her hands on her hips. “I need four volunteers as messengers-- Good,” she observed, as more than half the class shot their hands up into the air. “Everyone else, stay put. Sarah, you come up here,” Zap added, and nodded at her.

Sarah stood and quietly moved out of the middle of the class.

_ “Eet,” _ Grogu beeped, and Sarah felt him twist in her hold as one little hand stretched out towards Zera.

_ “Ret’, _ Grogu!” the Twi’lek answered, then jumped up to her feet and jogged to the front of the class as Zap called her forward as a volunteer.

It was somewhat strange to stand beside Zap as Sarah patiently waited for whatever it was the Mandalorian had to ask of her. Next to her, four of the older students arranged themselves to eagerly await instruction from the teacher. Two humans, Zera of course, and one furred species that had wolf-like features to his fierce face, and pointed ears. All of them were just barely higher than Sarah’s waist in height.

“Bring this message to the  _ buir,” _ Zap began, and all four students straightened their backs, determination and pride in their eyes. Sarah fought back a smile. “All  _ adiik _ are to be off-world by sundown.  _ Buir _ are to collect their _ adiik _ from class by noon. I will be here to answer any further questions, and arrange transport for those that need it,” she added. “Any questions?” Zap prompted.

All four students shook their heads, and Zap made a sharp gesture with her hand and two fingers, and swept it to the side and away. The children took off at a jog immediately, and Sarah mused that it looked almost as though the woman had shaped their movements with the Force, with how synchronized it had been.

“Sarah.”

She looked away from watching the children depart, and met the woman’s black visor-bar.

“It’s not as finished as I’d like it to be, but it will do. I’ve put together a data-pad with course studies for both you and your Foundling, to continue your education. I understand your situation,” Zap added, and Sarah found herself unable to answer immediately, throat constricted.

Grogu  _ raspberried _ at Zap, and Sarah jostled him lightly. All at once, she found her voice again.

“Knowledge is a powerful gift, Grogu,” she told him severely. “Do not make light of it.  _ Vor entye, _ Zap. I cannot express my gratitude to you enough,” Sarah added as she lifted her gaze back up to the woman.

“Not at all,” Zap replied easily, and waved a hand at them. “If you run into trouble with anything, just talk to Din. I’m sorry I can’t do more,” she added, then turned away to walk past the flickering holo-display screen towards a low, rectangular metal box.

Sarah had since heard of Grogu’s antics during her time away, and she eyed the device with chagrin.

“Here. Be careful with this - there’s nothing exactly confidential on it, but don’t let outsiders get ahold of it. There are language lessons that are better kept in the family,” Zap explained. “Keep working with him on his words. You’ve come a long way, little one,” she added, and reached over to touch her fingers to Grogu’s head. He burbled at her, a low warble that turned into a higher pitched note at the end, and Sarah smiled.

_ “Ret’urcye mhi, _ Zap,” Sarah said as she accepted the datapad into her free hand, and tucked it up under an arm. The friendly farewell was returned, and with no more business to attend to, the instructor turned right back to her class to address them.

The interaction had nested a bright, glowing sensation in Sarah’s chest as she turned away. It felt good to have something so pleasant to balance with the sense of urgency the morning had quickly taken on.

~*~

Marrek looked up from his work on pulling poles out of the ground with Din as a child came skidding up to him. He recognized the lad; it was hard not to, with his dark skin and light, strikingly hazel eyes, and a tousled, curly mess of improbably blond hair.

“Where’s my  _ buir?” _ Dakara’s son, Ruden, asked as he bounced on the toes of his feet. He was barely of height with Marrek’s hips.

“Try the training fields, think she’s helping fill the pit in,” Marrek answered, and the boy shot off before he could ask what the rush was. His helper straightened next to him from loosening the seat of the pole in the ground, and Marrek stepped aside as Din pulled the thing free.

“Are you going to help with this?” his friend asked gruffly, and Marrek waved a hand dismissively as he looked around the covert. It took a moment, but he picked up a new pattern in the chaos of people going about their business.

There were a handful of children running amidst the adults, like butterflies flitting from one flower to the next.

“Something’s going on, we’ve got messengers running around,” Marrek observed. He heard the soft  _ thwap _ and clatter of the wooden rod as Din tossed it down onto their growing pile, and then the man joined him as he looked on.

Marrek followed Din’s gaze when the shiny helmet turned sharply, and he spotted Sarah approaching them, Grogu in hand.

“Din! Marrek,  _ su’cuy,” _ she greeted. Marrek opened his mouth to answer, and shut it as she immediately continued, “That bald-guy Jahr said was asking around for us was spotted by the fourth flight checkpoint,” she relayed, and Marrek caught the slight shift in her voice. She probably didn’t even know where that was herself, but he did, and Din should. “Sabine’s told us to buggar off. They’re re-routing the path for transports. She wants us to take a different way.”

Disappointment gripped Marrek’s chest, hot and tight and uncomfortable. He’d known the three of them would be leaving, but he hadn’t expected it to be quite so  _ soon. _ He acknowledged with chagrin that he’d taken the promise of them staying through teardown for granted.

Marrek turned to face the man that had become something of a friend to him, and found he was genuinely sorry to be parting ways.

“We’ll get going, then,” Din answered his clanmate.

Marrek’s frown turned into a smirk when he recognized that Din, quite surprisingly, wasn’t paying attention to him; all Dun’s focus was on Sarah and the Foundling she held.

Not willing to miss the scant opportunity, Marrek made his attack.

~*~

Din heard the bard move beside him, but he still wasn’t expecting the sudden wrap of arms around his shoulders. He reacted immediately, prepared to throw the man off, and the bard suffered a sharp elbow to the side of his ribs and a clanging helmet-headbutt before Din Djarin realized what was actually going on.

The grapple hold he’d been locked into could  _ technically _ be considered a hug as Marrek laughed at him, squeezed, then let go.

“You two definitely have a bromance going on,” Sarah opined, obviously amused.

“We don’t,” Din answered shortly.

“We totally do,” Marrek countered.

Din elbowed him. The bard just laughed.

“Take care, you three. It was nice to meet  _ Jetii _ who are actually pretty pleasant. And one of them is even pretty cute,” Marrek added.

Din hoped the man meant the foundling, and rolled his shoulders to loosen them as he watched the bard remove his helmet, then lean forward to rub his nose to Grogu’s.

He didn’t bother to warn him. The idiot had already been told once.

“--Ack! Again with the  _ nose!” _ Marrek complained as he jerked back from one clawed finger, and earned a  _ raspberry _ and a grumble from the Foundling as Sarah rolled her eyes.

“He likes you, but not  _ that _ much,” she declared.

Din hesitated as he moved to walk past the bard towards his clanmates. Mind made up, he reached over and clapped a hand on the man’s shoulder.

“Safe travels,” Din said simply.

“Right back at you. I expect to hear some good stories next time we cross paths,” Marrek announced.

Din wondered if they ever would. He released the man as he stepped up beside his partner, and glanced at Grogu before he began to walk in the direction of their ship.

It was time to go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun Trivia:
> 
> I wasn't going to post this chapter today since I'm still working on chapter twenty two (which is getting VERY long yet I can't find a good place to cut it so I probably won't halp)
> 
> but I am dying to post the canon smut scene for Sarah and Din because it's adorbs, soooo you get to benefit from my indulgence. Plus, I'll be pretty busy with pewter orders in the coming days, so now is as good a time as any to squeak another one out.
> 
> I *totally* wanted Marrek to catch that Din had "an unusual pep in his step" in the morning following his wonderful night spent with Sarah, and call Din out on "WAIT DID YOU TWO...?" and Din could get all gruff and low-key embarrassed and chagrined he was too obvious about it.
> 
> Alas, Din's too good, Marrek's too distracted, and it just didn't happen because other plot things happened instead. Blame Boba Fett. Always blame Boba Fett.
> 
> \---
> 
> Mando'a Translations:
> 
> Briirud Burcyan - "Circle Bond" the name of a dance I made up for my take on Mandalorian lore. This is the dance Din teaches Sarah before they have their first kiss.
> 
> Kute - the assembled outfit of the Mandalorian bodysuit that goes beneath armor.
> 
> Sharal'Shig - "Lazy Beverage" my name for a relaxing Mandalorian drink.
> 
> Ibac'ner Buir - What Grogu is trying to say. He's tried to before, only now he's actually legible enough Din and Sarah can make it out! Ibac'ner basically is very emphatic "It's mine! That's mine!" Buir is the word for Mom/Dad interchangeably.
> 
> Ret' - "Bye" aka a casual, almost lazy, way of saying a goodbye in Mando'a. It's short for a much longer farewell, ret'urcye mhi (lit: "Maybe we'll meet again")
> 
> Vheh'yaim - "Earth house" Mandalorian home. See chapter 9's notes for more info.
> 
> Su cuy'gar - "Hello" literally: "You're still alive" (Su'cuy is a casual "hi")
> 
> Slana'pir - Very impolite way of saying "get out / go away" which I take to mean as "FUCK OFF" since the Mando'a dictionaries don't actually -name- any basic translations of swearing... they just imply it IS cussing ;P
> 
> Adiik - Children, technically children in the ages of 3-13
> 
> Vor entye - Literally "I accept a debt" a high thank-you
> 
> Jetii - Jedi


	22. Nevarro

“Marshal, walk with me - There’s something I don’t think you’ll want to miss,” Greef Karga announced in his rumbling voice, as he stepped through the open entryway of the small office. Sandy colored walls framed a cramped room designed more for utility than for comfort, and the woman he addressed looked up at him from her desk.

It was strange to see her at such a domestic task as filing data logs, especially after seeing the haul she’d brought in from her recent bust on a den of thieves. The blue armor platin g that protected Cara Dune’s neck and collarbone still had a fresh scorch-mark on the side.

“Oh? And what’s that?” she asked, her hands stilled over the datapad as she looked up.

“Come see for yourself,” he invited, and grinned at her even as he ignored a strain of tension that threatened to turn into a headache.

With Din Djarin’s infamous Razor Crest sighted by the watchtowers, he both looked forward to greeting old friends, and dreaded the potential for problems the Mandalorian’s presence could provoke. The man was a magnet for trouble, even before his stunt with going back on the bounty for the little green child.

All that, and there was still the matter of information Greef had learned, which Mando would need to know about.

Cara eyed him for a moment, then burst into motion as she set aside her work, and followed Greef Karga out the door.

The city streets were busy as they wove their way through the main thoroughfare, full of colorful banners that shaded a collection of merchant stalls. Greef felt the pride swell in his chest as he took in the sight, and wondered what his old friend would think of the dramatic changes the town had undergone in recent months.

“You’re in a good mood,” Cara observed. “Did the boys come back with an answer from Vlair?”

“No, we won’t hear about that for at least another week at least,” Greef answered thoughtfully. He was eager about the proposed trade deal with their sister city, but not anxious. He was patient; in time, things would fall into line.

“Hold on. Is that…?” Cara trailed off, and he glanced behind himself to see her squinting up at the sky.

Her face broke into a small, lopsided smile, and Greef didn’t bother to step out of the way of the fist that connected with his shoulder.

“Hey, now. Don’t beat up on an old man,” he said with mock-hurt as he smoothed out the sleeves of his leather jacket and red shirt.

“You’re not  _ that _ old yet, big oaf,” she retorted, then took off at a light jog. Greef huffed, then hurried to follow after her. People parted out of the way to let them pass.

~*~

Sarah decided that this planet was much like Tatooine, except instead of endless sands, there were large stretches of black, volcanic rock interspersed with brown and gray, barren dirt. She already missed the greenery of Trask.

It hadn’t taken them long to get here. The flight was almost  _ too _ short - she had been hoping for a little more down-time on the ride, so she could work on projects. The lightsaber weighed on the forefront of her mind, and she wanted to at least take it apart to clean and inspect it.

As it was, the most she’d been able to squeak in was a lesson on speech with Grogu. It’d been more than worth it, of course, and she was pleased by her child’s progress. The Foundling was getting better at learning to form his lipless mouth around the consonants he struggled with; vowels came far easier.

Now, as Sarah sat in the cockpit with Grogu on her lap as Din brought them through the landing sequence, she eyed the town ahead of them. It was unusual - settled in a vaguely plus-shaped design with a larger center, the four main roads were set within deep depressions formed between raised bubbles of massive lava formations. They had probably been cooled and hardened this way for generations. Tan buildings with domed tops crowded the available flat space, and a long entry road led from the landing area to the main square.

It reminded her strongly of the Imperial base they had infiltrated, with the narrow entrance pass, and the buildings settled into a well fortified position of natural landscape. At least it was far smaller. And hopefully Imp-free.

And it wouldn’t reek to high heavens of fish, not in this arid atmosphere.

“I want you and Grogu to stay close,” Din announced as the ship made contact with the ground. It always managed to surprise her how gently the big rig was able to land, a testament to the skill of its pilot. It only rocked beneath them once as it smoothly settled into place.

“Always,” Sarah promised him with a smile, then reached to tug her Tusken cowl up over her hair, and help obscure her face. Grogu was settled into his carrier, and beeped at her as she gently tugged part of the beige fabric over his head to hide him from view, her bone necklace clicking quietly. “What are we doing here?” Sarah wondered, unable to contain her curiosity any longer.

“Looking for information.” Din’s head lifted up from the controls to look out the window, then he sat up straighter in his seat. Sarah followed his gaze, and spotted a familiar face she hadn’t expected to see.

“Cara?” Sarah said, dumbfounded. She had almost forgotten about the woman she’d met only briefly, but her distinctive silhouette was hard to miss. Cara was jogging towards them from beneath the tall, crumbling stone arch that marked the entrance to the town. A man with rich, brown skin followed behind her, dressed in dark clothes and a muted red tunic that made him marginally stand out against the dull landscape.

“Didn’t expect to see her here,” Din commented, then threw off his harness straps and stood. There was an eagerness both in his quick movements and in the air around him Sarah found hard to ignore; it was infectious. Grogu seemed to notice, if his curious, happy warble was anything to go by.

“I’m glad to see her in one piece,” Sarah admitted as she followed Din down the ship, and waited next to him as the side door lowered. “You never were able to get in touch with her, were you?”

“No. I did hear she’d moved on from the world we left her at,” he revealed as they walked into the dry heat.

It didn’t take long before they met up with their small welcome party, and Sarah peered curiously at the man beside Cara as the two came to a halt. He was half a head taller than the ex shock-trooper, with a pleasant face marked with a salt-and-pepper goatee that gave him a wise, aged look. A black duster coat with short, flared sleeves neatly fit his shoulders like a vest and flowed down about his legs, open in the front and connected by a Magistrate’s chain and disc clips.

“Mando! Long time, no see,” the man greeted loudly as Cara just smiled at them. The expression was seen less in the small quirk of her lips, and more in the way her dark eyes seemed to glitter. “Where’s the little one?” he asked next, sounding surprised, perhaps even alarmed, and his gaze turned to Sarah.

“He’s right here,” Din supplied, and she swallowed as he reached over and lifted the cowl up off the child’s head. Grogu’s ears lifted as he looked up at the man.

_ “Soo-goo!” _ the child burbled, a mangled greeting.

Sarah furrowed her brows as she wondered whether to correct him, or hold off, because she wasn’t sure about how to speak  _ Mando’a _ in the presence of outsiders.

The moment was lost to her indecision, even as it was swiftly followed by the realization of just how much had changed since the last time she’d seen Cara.

Sarah felt a step removed from the people in front of her, in a way she hadn’t before. It wasn’t unpleasant, and it wasn’t like the way she’d always felt herself estranged from others, set apart by her connection to the Force. It was simply... different.

“Hah! I’d heard you got yourself quite the babysitter,” the man rumbled. “Come here to Grandpa Greef,” he crooned, and reached for the child.

Sarah took an immediate step back, and the man stopped, then raised his brow. Greef’s smile dropped as he sent a flat look to Din Djarin.

“We’re not here for long,” Din said calmly, then nodded at Sarah. “It’s alright. Kid saved his life once.”

“A lot’s changed since then,” Cara supplied. “It’s good to see you. All of you,” she added.

Sarah carefully worked Grogu out of the carrier, then hesitantly passed him off to the man who was still a stranger to her. There was a sharpness to him she didn’t think she liked; the kind of mood that followed someone who smiled when they’d rather be sour.

It faded away as the man bundled her child up in his arms and fussed over him, and Sarah finally felt herself relax marginally.

“Hold on,” Cara interrupted, cutting off Din’s barely started answer. “Isn’t that your clan signet?” she questioned, and pointed to Sarah’s right shoulder.

“It is,” he confirmed.

Cara’s brows climbed into her hairline as she glanced between them.

“What, did your Creed demand you adopt her, too, or something?” she asked with what Sarah thought was skeptical humor, then beckoned them to follow without waiting for an answer. Greef was already turning away.

Sarah trailed after, and kept a close eye on her Foundling and his current handler.

“...No. How did you end up here?” Din questioned.

“I might have been offered a favor in exchange for cleaning up Imperial trash,” Cara revealed as she fell into step with them. “Between Greef and the New Republic, I’ve got a clean record, and the world’s a whole lot more open.”

“That’s not the only thing that’s been cleaned up. You won’t believe the difference we’ve made in the time you’ve been gone,” Greef supplied with a warm, boastful pride resonating in his deep voice.

Sarah glanced to Din. His emotions were under wraps since they’d left the ship, focused as he was, yet she could still sense a lingering touch of turmoil beneath it. Whatever they were here for, it stressed him even through the obvious relief of meeting friendly faces.

“Speaking of,” Cara began, “You need to stay at least long enough for us to swap information. We cleaned out an Imperial base to the south, in the lava flats. You’re not going to like what we found,” she explained seriously.

“And that’s not all we need to discuss,” Greef added. His manner was almost off-hand, but Sarah wasn’t fooled. The way he handled Grogu changed subtly; though he still fussed over the child, his shoulders had tensed, and there was a flatter tone in his deep voice.

“I heard  _ someone _ pissed off Moff Gideon,” Cara commented. Sarah gave her a startled double-take.

“How do you already  _ know _ about that?” Sarah demanded, incredulous, and fought to compose her features back to outward calm as her thoughts raced. Her eyes flicked to Grogu, and she resisted the temptation to whisk him away from the man that held him.

“Relax, you’ll still want to watch yourself, but not many do. Not yet,” Greef assured. “We only know because the pucks got dropped off at the Guild.”

“And have you handed any out?” Din asked, a sharp edge to his otherwise calm voice.

“No, the Marshal here intervened as soon as the contact left, or I would have,” Greef revealed bluntly. “They brought five copies; you can have one to look at yourself, if you’d like. I’ve already wiped the data clean off the others.” He looked over his shoulder to eye Sarah with a quick up-and-downwards glance, then continued, “Believe me, Mando, I have no desire to stir trouble with you  _ or _ your new friend.”

“Thank you,” Sarah answered, not sure what else to say. The conversation came to a lull as they neared the end of the narrow path where people could be seen ahead, and the black rock fell away from either side. Though the space here was technically larger, it didn’t feel like it with the packed streets. Lifeforms of every variety roamed the area, all going about various business of some kind.

Out of caution, Sarah turned her attention towards weaving a net of misdirection, and focused on the convincing illusion that she and her family were no one to take notice of, that they were entirely unremarkable, forgettable.

She was a little startled to find she could pick out Din and Grogu far more easily than she had the last time she’d hidden them in a crowded city lane, and welcomed the familiar flood of energy as it coursed through her body.

Sarah frowned slightly as she noted the quaint merchant stalls; some sold food, others raw materials or finished goods. One boasted a wide selection of colorful toys that children flocked around with beleaguered or patient parents interspersed amidst them.

It was a familiar scene, as were the scents in the air that came with it. The chatter, the noise; it was a good day for business.

It reminded her vaguely of where she’d first met Grogu and Din, even as she acknowledged other memories connected to the hustle and bustle of a busy market square. Focusing on the one that she  _ liked, _ Sarah let herself smile a little.

A hand settled at the small of her back, and she glanced over to see Din Djarin had moved closer as they strolled behind their guides. Her smile grew.

Sarah was glad to leave the press of people behind as Greef led them to a nondescript building. It was in the same style as all the others she’d seen, boxy, beige, and lacking in almost any ornamentation.

The only thing that differentiated it from the others was a polished metal plaque above the door that announced the building as the Magistrate’s office.

Inside, the walls were lined with a surprising array of real books and binders of paperwork, as well as two data terminals, a long, cluttered desk, and some sparse furniture. A low bench with a leather-covered cushion was built into the wall across from the desk, off-center, sandwiched between a table with a bulbous light on it, and one of the terminals.

Sarah let her illusion drop with relief, then readily accepted Grogu from Greef as he turned around to pass her child back. She carefully wrapped him up in both her arms, and let her sling hang empty.

For several moments no one spoke. Cara dropped onto the long bench, and leaned on the table with an elbow as she watched them.

The door hissed shut from behind.

“I didn’t think the Imps would do business with you after what happened. Has something changed?” Din immediately prompted the Magistrate. Sarah wondered exactly what it was he was talking about, and silently glanced between them.

Greef Karga’s expression changed little as he walked to his dull metal desk, then leaned against the outer edge of it with folded arms.

“No. These didn’t come direct from an Imperial remnant, but third party from another Guild’s messenger making the rounds. They aren’t terribly picky  _ who _ brings the targets in, so long as they get them,” Greef explained. “But that’s not the most important thing here - Marshal?” he prompted, and turned to look at Cara.

Cara shared a glance with him, then turned her attention back to Din. Sarah adjusted Grogu in her arms as the child watched the adults with open curiosity. His ears twitched and swiveled at every new sound.

“That Imperial base we destroyed? It wasn’t just any kind of base,” Cara began, then shifted her weight to one hip so she could reach into a pocket on her belt. As she withdrew a small object, she continued, “We weren’t able to get much because they shot up the operating station, but we had a guy pull what data logs were left.”

A sense of foreboding settled over Sarah’s shoulders as she watched the silver cylinder of a data stick arc through the air, and be caught in Din’s hand.

“It was some kind of lab. Big tubes of bacta with mutated lifeforms. There was a transmission on record that talked about needing more blood samples from a donor - I’m pretty sure it’s the little guy they were talking about,” she finished, and nodded at Grogu.

“Another lab?” Din commented as he turned the device over in his hand, then pocketed it. “There’s one on Trask. Sarah saw it first-hand.”

Sarah shifted her weight as all the eyes in the room turned her way. Grogu had sunk into his robes, his ears drooped back, and she had a feeling the child understood  _ exactly  _ what they were talking of.

She looked down at him with concern, and decided this was something she needed to try and talk to him about. If he could provide her with memories of his experiences, they might learn more of what exactly the Imperials wanted with him, and thus, what their end goal was.

“How did that come about?” Cara wondered, one brow quirked.

“Let’s just say it’s why I have a bounty on my head,” Sarah hedged.

“That’s easy enough to gather,” Greef answered gruffly. “But we’re going to want more information than that. I don’t like this one bit; whatever they’re up to, it can’t be good.”

Sarah glanced to Din. The dark bar of his visor partially angled her way, and on impulse, she reached over to brush her hand against his, then… Reached.

It had been too long since they’d connected like this, but she had not forgotten the familiar sensation of touching against Din Djarin’s mind. He straightened a fraction, and his helmet turned to face her fully.

It was difficult to maintain focus on the telepathic bond and not give up her senses completely. She didn’t want to detach herself entirely from the environment, and found herself in an acceptable balance; she was aware of Greef and Cara’s shifting posture as the two observed her silent interaction with Din. As the man in question let her enter his mind, she wasn’t overwhelmed by the breadth of his swirling thoughts.

His emotions came to her clearer, though. Like a foggy window wiped clean, she could distinctly feel each individual sensation. Fear, worry. His anxiety over the situation, mingled with a powerful urgency to keep moving, to search something out. He both yearned for and dreaded the coming trip to somewhere.

Amidst them, she also felt his pleasure at sharing this connection with her, and his surprise at her initiating it. Curiosity laced the edges of her partner’s thoughts, and beyond that, a deep, steady center. Calm, focused; though he had concerns, he wasn’t alarmed.

_ ‘How much is alright to tell them?’ _ she wondered.

_ ‘Leave the covert and the others out of it. Otherwise, as much as you want to share. They’re friends,’ _ he answered immediately. Sarah had forgotten how fast the exchange in mental conversation was, especially compared to the frequent pauses in verbal conversation as he thought out his words.

Even as he answered her, she also caught the accompanying drift of reflection on his own assertion. He trusted Cara explicitly, but there was a fuzziness in his regard for Greef Karga. He had been an enemy, once. As the leader of the Bounty Hunters guild stationed here on Nevarro, Din was wary to put complete faith in him. So long as their interests aligned, however, he figured they were safe enough.

And at the moment, they shared a common enemy.

“Are you two going to just stand there and stare at each other, or actually tell us something useful?” Greef interrupted, impatient. The exchange had only lasted moments, yet even as she reluctantly withdrew, Sarah understood that their audience had caught the interaction was significant. Even if they didn’t understand  _ why. _

“Wait. Are you two… a  _ thing?” _ Cara wondered, and twirled her finger in a circle as she pointed it at them, one brow quirked. Greef huffed.

“Can’t be, the walking bucket doesn’t have a romantic bone in his body,” the man dismissed. Sarah ignored them both, and launched right into a brief account of her experience in Moff Gideon’s laboratory facilities. She described what she had seen within, the little she had learned, and left out the exact reason for why she’d been there in the first place.

All they needed to know was that she’d been after information; if they assumed she’d been intentionally investigating the lab itself, that was fine by her.

“Gideon’s got a vendetta against Sith?” Cara asked skeptically. “Not really what I was expecting.”

“Who cares what his agenda is against some extinct order? I’m more concerned about how he’s going to accomplish it,” Greef grumbled, the lines of his face made deeper as he frowned severely.

“The agenda  _ is _ important,” Sarah insisted. “The end goal is just as important to understanding his intentions as knowing what his immediate objectives are.”

“We know he wants the kid for his blood. Might want her for the same reasons,” Din supplied.

Sarah jolted when claws on the end of tiny, warm fingers touched her jaw, then winced as they brushed the edge of her burn. She tilted her chin up high and away from the contact.

“Careful, sweetie, that hurts,” she informed him gently, and reached up to carefully move Grogu’s hand away from it. He made a soft noise of protest, then settled in her arms with a mulish expression.

Sarah was glad the injury hadn’t significantly swelled up as Soren had speculated it might, though it still left her throat and the muscles of her neck sore.

“Now that’s a nasty mark. How’d you get that?” Greef questioned, surprise in his rumbling voice. Sarah figured he hadn’t noticed it sooner due both to being taller than her, and from the fabric cowl wrapped around her shoulders.

“Moff Gideon,” Sarah answered reluctantly. She had no desire to give the entire story on  _ that _ count.

“Kriff, I’ve seen that before; he had you at  _ gunpoint?” _ Cara questioned, and fixed her with a newly appraising look.

Sarah sighed through her nose, jaw clenched. She should have kept her mouth shut entirely, or just said it came from a gun and left it at that. The mark was important to her for reasons she hadn’t yet fully sorted out, and she didn’t feel like sharing.

It was personal.

“The leak in the medical staff,” Din prompted. Sarah cast him a grateful glance for the change of topic. “Can you find out if they have more information on what’s going on?”

Cara grimaced slightly and rested a hand on her thigh, then shifted her weight to lean back into the seat as she spoke.

“I might have an official office now, but they don’t fill me in on that sort of thing. There’s a chance I could be able to get something, if you’re willing to let me drop that I know who took the heat on their behalf,” she offered. “They’ll probably want to meet you.”

Sarah swallowed, then adjusted Grogu in her arms as she considered.

After a moment, she looked at her partner, and wondered what Din’s thoughts were. Before she could try reaching out to him and find out first-hand, his chest and shoulders rose then fell in a deep, bone-weary sigh. He turned to look at her.

“If you’re alright with it, then let’s do it,” Din stated. “But I don’t want them putting tabs on my ship,” he added with a sharp glance to Cara.

“We’ll just have to make sure they don’t see the Razor Crest to do that. I’m sure we can work something out,” the Marshal assured.

“If that’s all, we need to get going,” Din prompted shortly, after a nod to acknowledge Cara’s words.

“Well, hello and goodbye to you, too,” Greef huffed. He sounded torn between amusement and mild offense, and Sarah had the impression he was used to Din’s abrupt nature, if not wholly accepting of it. “Maybe next time you’ll stay long enough your ship actually has a chance to cool its engines.”

“I think that covers it, except for this,” Cara interjected dryly. Sarah watched as the woman let herself behind Greef’s desk, then knelt down until only the top of her head and shoulders were visible.

After a moment, something clicked and hissed softly, and Sarah assumed the woman must be accessing a safe.

“One bounty puck, as promised,” the Marshal announced, and stood up with a small leather sack in hand as the hidden door latched shut again. She rummaged in the bag, then pulled out a thick silver circle that fit neatly in her broad palm. “Gotta say, they caught your good side,” Cara joked as she put the puck down, then depressed the white top. A small hologram immediately flickered to life above it, luminous and blue with red text above and below. Sarah had never seen one in person; it was a double novelty to see her own face on it, though she almost didn’t recognize herself. Her brows were drawn in a flat, stubborn line, parallel to her lips pressed together, and her short hair stood up spiked and ruffled in different directions.

‘Angry’ wasn’t the right description for the expression frozen in time, but there was a dangerous severity to it she didn’t recognize.

Was that fierce countenance really hers?

Sarah swallowed thickly, and abruptly realized that the image must have been taken directly from the moment she’d first been revealed to Gideon, her hat only just removed. They’d probably edited out the gun; she remembered holding perfectly still during that confrontation, but she had thought her face would have shown fear, anxiety, or alarm.

Not… whatever this was.

All this she observed in the first few moments of her miniaturized head slowly spinning in the air, and then she turned her attention to the text.

On the top, they listed her name as ‘ _ Sarah Slaat’ulik.’ _

On the bottom, tiny numerals stretched across the width of the hologram marked her impressive bounty.

Grogu stretched a hand towards it, ears raised.

_ “Bu-ir!” _ he warbled excitedly, drawing the word out to make it easier to say.

The touching moment didn’t quite kill Sarah’s unease as Cara tapped the disc again; the face vanished, and was replaced with a scant blurb of centered text and a marginally more detailed bounty note.

**Sarah Slaat’ulik**

**Human adult, Female**

**Deadly. Approach with Caution**

**Last known planetary location: Trask**

**Last known transportation: Razor Crest**

**Reward: Alive only**

**2,000,000**

“Has to be the smallest puck I’ve ever seen for such a wanted criminal,” Greef observed with open humor. “They don’t even list your crimes, or jurisdiction.  _ That _ was given by word of mouth.”

“What’d they say?” Sarah asked, hoarse. Grogu wriggled in her arms until he could twist around to grab at the bone necklace she wore to secure her cowl in place, and mouthed one of the knuckle beads. Beside her, she barely registered the tip of Din’s helmet as he studied the display.

“Not much,” Greef answered. “Officially? Property damage and manslaughter. Unofficially? Rumor has it you made a personal grudge,” he enthused. His mustache twitched up with a small smirk as Greef reached over and shut the puck off, then picked it up and rolled it in his hand.

“They’re in a rush to get word out,” Din opined, then held a hand out for the hologram device. Sarah watched as it was placed in his palm, and away it went into one of many pouches on Din’s utility belt. “They’ll issue new ones as soon as they have more information on her.”

“All the more reason for us to keep moving,” Sarah added with a grimace. “Especially since from what I’ve gathered, there’s a whole  _ group _ of bounty hunters here.”

“And all under my command,” Greef assured firmly, his chest raising as he puffed himself up with a huff. “They know Mando and the child are off-limits, or you’d have had them on you the moment your ship was spotted in the atmosphere. Most have been serving as town security when they’re not out on active jobs. It certainly pays more reliably - They’re hired hands, not bloodthirsty zealots,” he grunted.

Sarah noted that she was left out of the equation, and didn’t trust for a moment that a collective bounty of nearly four million credits between herself and Grogu wouldn’t turn  _ someone’s _ head.

That Greef hadn’t passed out the pucks was one thing - but who was to say the person who’d delivered them in the first place hadn’t stopped to have a chat with another Guild member?

“Good luck with the town,” Din stated with an air of finality, and extended an arm for a shake. Greef accepted with a firm clasp of hands, and Cara stepped forward to do what Sarah was beginning to think of as a warrior’s version of a handshake - they grabbed each other by the wrist instead of by the palm.

She felt a smile form as Cara silently invited her to share the gesture, and stepped past Din to accept - and was startled when the Marshal hauled on her arm and wrapped her in a one-armed hug.

“Take care of the little guy, and watch yourself out there,” Cara ordered, then released her almost as fast as she’d grabbed her. Sarah smiled.

“We will,” she promised, and heard the sound of Din opening the door. “It was good to see you again.”

“Likewise,” Cara answered, even as Sarah turned away.

“Next time you drop by, at least stay for a drink, Mando!” Greef called as they walked out the door.

Sarah shook her head, amused.

~*~

Din didn’t bother to answer the man as they stepped into the dry heat. The sun was already making a fast track for the horizon, and there were less people on the streets than there had been before.

He felt keyed up and on edge. He’d known word would travel fast where it concerned Grogu and Sarah, yet he hadn’t expected to see it quite  _ this _ fast.

And that wasn’t the only thing that had him strung-out as he led the way through the town back towards the main market square, his partner easily keeping pace with him. It took effort to check his stride and keep from appearing to be in a rush, which was sure to draw attention they didn’t want.

Or maybe not. No one was paying them any mind, and he cast a glance to Sarah as they walked.

“Are you hiding us?” he asked quietly.

“Hmm? Oh. Yes,” she answered. She’d been looking around the area with open curiosity, and now her icy eyes turned his way. “I usually do when there’s a crowd on principle, but I’m definitely being more cautious now.”

They fell into silence after that, and Din took a moment to appreciate it. He enjoyed talking with Sarah as much as he enjoyed the fact they could exist together without a word shared between them, and she never pressured him to be any different than he was.

It didn’t take long to reach their destination - a low, squat building with a rounded facade, entirely unadorned.

Almost unadorned, he corrected as they wove between the crowd and he got his first full glimpse of it. Scorch marks marred the inside, and the front door was boarded up.

Din stopped in front of it, and was only distantly aware of the fact Grogu and Sarah were eying the evidence of abandonment and a fight long since passed.

Gloved fingers brushed against rough wood. It wasn’t well secured - three mismatched boards, laid over each other. He cast a quick look around, then stepped back.

“Move over,” he ordered shortly.

Sarah complied immediately, even though she was obviously confused. Realization dawned in the split second before Din Djarin shifted his stance, then hiked his knee and kicked out, quick and sharp.

Wood splintered, and the fastenings popped free as two of the boards were sent clattering into the front foyer.

He ducked down and entered without bothering to remove the third, and Sarah followed after him.

“What is this place?” she asked quietly.

He stopped in the center of the room, throat constricted as he looked around. It took several moments to find his voice, and when he spoke, he heard it come out rough and quiet, almost too quiet.

“This was home.”

~*~

Sarah swallowed thickly as she took in the wrecked interior of what had probably once been a very nice front entryway. The room was small, with a chipped tile floor of deep blue, and two benches built right out of the same material as the thick walls that spanned the length of each side of the circular space. Two open doorways at the back led to what looked like empty storage rooms or office areas, and a stone desk was situated in the center-back of the space, curved to match the flowing architecture of the room.

Grogu looked around curiously, but didn’t utter a peep as he shrank down into his robe.

Melted depressions in the walls, each ringed in scorch marks, revealed evidence of a shoot-out, and behind the desk was a gaping hole in the wall. Large blocks of stone lay in a sadly crumbled heap around it, and Sarah could see a dimly illuminated stairwell beyond.

Din Djarin seemed frozen in place as he examined the surroundings, and she could feel the unpleasant prickle of his anxiety. It was threaded with an oppressive weight of guilt and deep sorrow, and for the first time since their bond had manifested, she desperately wished for entirely selfish reasons that she had a way to turn it  _ off _ .

It was hard to think straight under the weight of emotions that weren’t her own, especially ones as dark and haunted as these.

Part of her wanted to reach out to Din to offer him comfort, and another part of her wondered if he’d welcome the intrusion while he was so wound-up. Their relationship was still so new, Sarah wasn’t entirely sure how to handle this new side of him even as her concern burned hot and bright.

In the end, she only followed after as he started forward and led the way beyond the desk. His ragged-edged cape dragged over the top of the rubble as he stepped over it and onto the first landing, and Sarah realized this had probably been a secret passage, though this hadn’t been the original entrance. To her immediate left as she followed him, she saw the cracked and dulled seams of what she guessed to be the real hidden door, drawn into the wall.

Grogu sneezed at the dust their passage stirred up as they followed the spiraling stairs downward. Sunlight from a crumbled ventilation opening in the roof above dimly illuminated the first few turns as it bounced along the light colored walls, then began to fade.

As they approached darkness, Sarah watched Din clip a small light onto his helmet’s earcap, and made a correction to an old observation of his equipment - he didn’t have it built in.

An unpleasant and distinctive odor reached her nose, mingled with a strong sulfur scent that almost masked it, and Sarah’s brows furrowed.

His home had been in the  _ sewers? _

They stepped out of the stairwell into a long, wide tunnel, more than tall enough to stand comfortably in, with a curved ceiling. Solid walking paths on either side followed the straight walls in either direction, and the center was covered by well-secured metal grating. A section of it was busted open far to her left where the stench emanated from, illuminated by a pair of cut-out vent holes in the ceiling that allowed thin squares of light in from outside.

More of the vents sporadically lit the dreary tunnel, and Sarah suspected they would have been in regular intervals if it weren’t for damage that could only have been from explosives.

Whatever had happened here, it hadn’t been good. She remembered Din mentioning an Imperial attack, and her lips curved into a deep frown.

“This way,” Din said softly, and Sarah realized with chagrin that he’d walked several paces away from her while she’d been busy examining the surroundings. She hurried after him, her boots echoing dully on the metal. Something squeaked at them, and she glanced sideways to see a strange rodent watching them. It’s eyes glinted red as they reflected the ambient light, set into a triangular, rodent-like face on an elongated, furry body.

Some sort of weasel.

Sarah looked back ahead just in time to stop herself from jogging right into Din’s back. He had stopped in front of a large archway cut into the side of the tunnel, and Sarah looked up. The stone here looked relatively newer than the sewer’s main construction, yet it was still aged. At the top of the arch was a bright outline of a vaguely familiar shape, a triangular space with a down-sweeping curve to either side, like horns. A spattering of absurdly uneven, misplaced screw-holes in seemingly random clusters marred the lighter spot of stone where something had probably once been mounted to it.

Memory stirred, and she looked down at Grogu.

It was uncannily like the skull necklace the child wore, currently hidden under his robes, and a chill ran down Sarah’s spine.

Din’s aura hadn’t changed much since they’d first entered the building above-ground, but now it took on a shift in intensity and focus as he abruptly strode forward into the room.

As he moved away to investigate the space, Sarah stopped under the arch to take it in.

Smooth walls, a plain floor. Simple yet clearly well crafted, it didn’t match the odd addition of two large tables and several chairs, all crudely made, and one of which was broken. Trash cluttered the tabletops, and an empty cage sat beside a stained cutting board and butcher’s knife. In the back center of the round space was a strange fixture that seemed more like it belonged here. A tubular chute dropped down from the ceiling and flared out into a ring of square panels that fanned out from its edge, suspended above a weird table-looking thing with a raised ring. Around its edge was mounted a solid pipe.

As Sarah cautiously walked closer to get a better look, she realized it wasn’t a table. There were small holes present in the raised circle, which turned out to be a narrow frame. In the very center was a deep pit, and she spotted more furniture beyond the structure. It had the feel of a workspace, gutted and abandoned. A solid command center stood behind it next to the wall, with gaping holes where electronics must once have been installed into the sturdy frame.

They gaped at her like a great, hungry maw, desolate and hollow.

Sarah swallowed thickly, then turned to see where her partner had gotten off to.

Din Djarin paced slowly along the walls as the fingers of one gloved hand lightly trailed over the smooth surface.

“What are we looking for?” she asked quietly.

This must have been the place he’d been dreading going to.

“Clues,” he answered flatly.

Sarah considered, then set Grogu down so he could stretch his legs. She wasn’t surprised to find the toddler immediately waddling off to follow after Din.

_ “Oouir!” _ Grogu burbled, not trying to properly form the start of the word in his haste.

Din stopped in his tracks, and Sarah smiled faintly as the Beskar helmet dipped sharply down, the man half-twisting by the waist to see the child as he toddled up to his surrogate father.

That the atmosphere surrounding Din lightened slightly was a little more unexpected, though Sarah mused it really shouldn’t have been. It was hard to hold onto negativity when a child was being cute.

_ “Buir,” _ she corrected softly. Grogu turned his head to look at her with perked ears, and Sarah slowly mouthed the first puckered-lip motion for sounding out the beginning  _ ‘boo’ _ noise.

Ears twitched, then the child looked back up at Din as he repeated the word. This time, he made an effort to sound it out properly, though he still ended up drawing the  _ Mando’a _ word for parent out into two parts. He was getting better.

“...C’mere, kid,” Din said roughly, then knelt down to pick him up, and Sarah chose not to tell him the point had been for Grogu to exercise.

After a moment, she trailed over and joined them. Din’s mood had lightened, but only just.

“Are you alright?” she asked finally, concerned, as he resumed his slow walk.

“I’m fine.” The curt, dismissive answer was shockingly immediate.

Sarah was brought up short, struck soundly by the certain realization that this was the first time Din Djarin had ever lied to her.

She swallowed, then took a slow, steady breath. It shouldn’t unsettle her as much as it did, she decided; perhaps she’d phrased her question wrong.

Or maybe he just didn’t want to talk about it; she wouldn’t blame him.

But if that was the case, she’d rather he simply tell her that outright.

Alarmingly, Sarah wasn’t sure what she felt strongest - her worry for him, or the growing burn of guilt and anger at herself for being so affected in a selfish way when Din was clearly struggling through something that cut deep.

She didn’t like losing control of her reactions like this, so unexpectedly and powerfully, and the thought that he could provoke such a response in herself was, in a way, terrifying. It mingled dangerously with the emotions that surrounded her that weren’t her own, and yet, as Sarah found a vein of similarity, it became hard to distinguish what was hers and what was simply feedback she got off her friend and lover as he prowled the room.

Try as Sarah might, all the logic in the world couldn’t stop her emotions from spiraling out of control as her distress and concern grew in equal proportions, and mingled with her own unease at being treated to this closed-off side of him.

It was like being abandoned outside home in the middle of a storm. Even though the press of Din’s emotional turmoil drowned her, choked the very air, he himself was closed off, distant, and much too far away.

~*~

There was blood on the floor, and some splattered on the walls. Old, rusty-red stains that blended in with the browned stone and dim lighting. Din reflected that he probably wouldn’t have noticed it if it weren’t for the fact he was intimately familiar with this space and what it  _ should _ look like.

What he didn’t know was if it had come from Forgemaster Werlaara, either her own or her opponents’, or from whoever had clearly occupied the space in the interim. He wasn’t surprised by that detail; places like this didn’t take long to pass into new ownership when they went vacant.

It didn’t stop him from having to count his breaths under the weight of guilt and worry that clutched his chest and made it hard to breathe, or the deep-seated roll of furious anger at those who had desecrated a once sacred space. The furniture that had been added to the forgeroom felt off, almost alien.

Actually, everything about this place felt wrong, and it warred against what good memories Din associated with this room.

Krae had told him what to look for, yet her clue didn’t help him much, and his sour mood turned dismal at the thought he might not find anything of use here after all.

_ “Forgemaster Werlaara is well named; it is drawn from ancient Mando’a, archaic in these times, and little known even amidst many of the Lorekeepers of the tribe. It means ‘myth,’ and she has long been fond of riddles. She would not have left the Covert without some clue to kin behind. Look for a legend to point the way.” _

Din was painfully aware that he was not well versed in the histories of the tribe, or even in general. Krae had assured him he would be able to find  _ something, _ and he had foolishly believed her.

He knew a handful of the old Songs taught to him as a Foundling and through the years growing up, but many had been forgotten over the years.

For so long, his life had been immersed in the rough lifestyle of bounty hunting, a never-ending stream of fights, and through that he had supported the tribe. There was little need for scholarly pursuits beyond what was immediately relevant to his work.

Now, Din regretted the oversight.

Grogu made a soft, expressive noise, and he glanced down at the child he cradled close to his heart in the crook of one arm. A little green hand lifted, and after a moment, Din put the index finger of his free hand to it, and felt the distant curl of Grogu’s tiny digits as the kid latched on.

It wasn’t terribly surprising to feel a cool pressure probe at his mind, yet Din clenched his jaw.

He wasn’t sure if letting the Foundling into his headspace right now was a good idea; he could barely focus as it was, fighting off the weight of memory and regret.

_ “Boo-ir,” _ Grogu beeped with effort.

Din caved, and his eyes fell shut as he felt the child’s presence first surround his mind, then envelope it like his head had been submersed in invisible water. It wasn’t necessarily unpleasant, and it wasn’t specifically comfortable, only... strange.

Din sucked in a breath as the first wave of emotions rolled over him, and he recognized an immediate difference in this telepathic experience and his previous interaction with the child. Grogu’s thoughts were clearer, more orderly, like he’d gotten better at maintaining focus on it.

Sharp and bright was the child’s concern, behind which nested a voracious curiosity, barely restrained. He was hungry, but then, he always was.

There was something possessive in the way the child regarded him that Grogu made a pointed effort to share the feeling of, and Din recognized it as thoughts revolving around viewing him as a parental figure. It extended towards Sarah, and even as Din observed this with a shuddering breath and a tightness in his chest, he felt the shift of Grogu’s focus.

He was unhappy, probably because he was worried. His father was in a dark place, and his mother was afraid, and Grogu didn’t know what to do. They were both surrounded by such terrible darkness, and he didn’t feel… safe.

Alarm spiked, only this time the emotion was Din’s own as he looked behind him to see his partner. It was disorientating; Grogu’s presence still lurked strong and vivid in his mind, and it was a struggle to focus and see what was in front of him when his attention kept wanting to drift inwards.

His clanmate had an unfocused look to her eyes, lost in thought. Din knew that look, and he hated to see it on her. Sarah’s posture was uncharacteristically tense and rigid, her lips pressed into a thin line as her brows furrowed together.

“Sarah?” Din prompted roughly; he had to force her name out as he turned to face her fully. Grogu seemed to register his distress at the split in perception, and the child withdrew from his mind with a quiet, audible coo.

“Yes?” she answered, and his partner’s full attention immediately zeroed in on him. There was a fierce intensity to her gaze as she met his eyes, and Din swallowed thickly.

It still unnerved him at times to feel like she could see right through his visor, past the mask he wore, and bore right into the core of him.

“What’s wrong? The kid thinks you’re afraid,” Din explained.

He hadn’t been expecting a specific reaction from her, but seeing her  _ flinch _ was still surprising, and his worry doubled.

Was she still worked up over the bounty?

“...I’ve got a lot on my mind,” Sarah hedged, and Din frowned at her dismissive manner.

“We’ve got privacy,” he tried, then cast a look around the room to illustrate his point.

“I’m worried about you,” she admitted softly. Caught off guard, he looked back to her in time to see her gaze drop to the floor as she hid her eyes from him. A hand lifted to brush hair that was no longer there behind an ear, until she caught the movement and quickly dropped her arm.

This wasn’t what he’d been expecting.

“Why?” he prompted warily, even as an idea began to form. It swiftly grew into certainty, and he closed his eyes as a sense of shame washed over him. Of course.

She could feel his mood. If Grogu’s concern was anything to go off of, he couldn’t imagine what it must be like for her - he wasn’t exactly clear on what Sarah could sense specifically, but he had gathered she was far more attuned to him than the child was; she had a tendency to pick up on cues Grogu didn’t seem to notice at all. She certainly noticed things that no one else had any way of knowing.

Din heard the soft scuff of her boots on the stone floor.

When he opened his eyes, Sarah was right in front of him. She reached up, and he listened to the brush of her fingers as she settled a hand on the side of his helmet.

Din Djarin was disturbed by the sudden, desperate need he felt to rip the thing off to feel her against his skin. She was too far away, too distant, kept at arm’s reach from him even though she stood close enough his elbow almost touched her chest with the Foundling held between them.

When his partner spoke, Sarah seemed hesitant, as if she wasn’t certain she wanted to tell him what she was thinking.

“You’re wound up tight enough to resort to lying, and I’ve never seen you like this before,” Sarah said softly. “You are  _ not _ fine. You don’t have to tell me details,” she continued hastily. “But… Please. Don’t lie to me,” she requested softly. “Anything but that.”

Din shifted the child in his arm to the unarmored side of his torso, then stepped forward and wrapped his free arm around her in a loose hug. Her arms circled his waist, and he sighed heavily.

Part of him wanted to tell her that he  _ was _ fine, and deny her accusation; his turmoil now was none of her business, and it was a small thing to brush off an intrusive inquiry.

And there, he supposed, was the problem.

He wasn’t fine, and he already knew she respected his personal space. All he had to do was tell her where the lines were, and she stayed outside of them.

Even if he didn’t always like having to. It warred against his desire to be closer to her, and yet, opening up to someone about such personal wounds was not so easily done. Even for her.

The irony wasn’t lost on Din - they’d been in this situation before in the opposite direction, several times over.

And Sarah had never lied to avoid him, he was certain. When she hadn’t outright surrendered her vulnerabilities or weighing thoughts, she’d made it clear enough she simply wasn’t ready to talk.

The shame he felt doubled in weight, and it didn’t mix well with the other emotions he already had crowding his head that made his heart clench painfully in his chest. The agony was somewhat offset by Sarah’s arms around him, and the warm weight of his Foundling in his hold. Din closed his eyes as he struggled to find the right words to answer her.

When he did, his stomach churned unpleasantly.

Perhaps it wasn’t the perfect choice, as there were simpler, less indulgent ways to express a regretted action, but they fell short of what he wanted to express, and he’d never been one for poetry to string together something clever like he felt she deserved.

That he  _ wanted _ to impress her was such a novel feeling in and of itself, it nearly distracted him from more serious focus. Din was not used to feeling so… inadequate.

Phrases often used in casual conversation or for the little inconveniences and mistakes through life didn’t quite fit the current circumstances.

_ “Ni ceta,” _ he murmured roughly. Words he had never spoken in this context, for he had little use for apologies. And certainly none as strong as this.

~*~

Sarah recognized the words, but she couldn’t fathom at first why Din Djarin would say  _ ‘I kneel’ _ to her. She almost asked for him to explain, then realized that she didn’t need to. The weight and depth of his regret rolled through the air around her, as raw and exposed as he’d been to enter the ruins of his old home.

Sarah almost wished she hadn’t said anything, or deferred the moment to quiet discussion later, when he wasn’t so vulnerable, wasn’t already submersed in a dark place. When bringing it up might not have caused Din this much pain.

Almost.

She’d rather work through this now with him, help bring him back from the edge of wherever it was he stood.

So she tightened her hold, then relaxed against him, and focused on letting him feel the faith she had in him, her acceptance, her offer of comfort and reassurance. Both physically, through posture and contact, and with the reaching push of her own aura.

Grogu warbled softly at them, and she felt a tiny hand press against her bicep as the child twisted in Din’s arm. The embrace turned into something more like an impromptu family cuddle.

When her partner’s thoughts began to whisper through her awareness moment’s later, Sarah was startled.

She hadn’t meant to reach  _ that _ far.

~*~

Din Djarin rested his chin over the top of Sarah’s head. She was just the right height for it, fit perfectly against him. Between her and Grogu turning his little head into the crook of Din’s shoulder, the ache he felt in so many ways softened at the edges.

Just enough that he could hold himself together from fraying apart, and think straight.

Just enough that he was aware of the fact Sarah’s presence shimmered around him like an enveloping blanket, a soothing balm against open wounds rubbed raw.

When Din closed his eyes and focused on the sensation, on welcoming it, he felt her surprise ripple across his mind, and he realized something important.

She had reached for him, but she hadn’t reached  _ into _ him.

He had simply met her halfway.

Conversation flowed quickly after that, even though actual words were slow to follow. He felt Sarah’s concern behind the surprise and her relief at their working through this. Immediately alongside was her guilt at provoking him, and Din answered her with reassurance. She hadn’t really overstepped; he’d reacted poorly. And what they were doing now was exactly what he hadn’t even known he’d needed.

Her relief was instant, as was the already present well of understanding Din had sensed yet hadn’t placed until he now had the context to match it with.

Sarah had already forgiven him, long before he’d spoken, and he could feel her awe and her appreciation of his apology even as he felt her embarrassment at reacting as strongly as she had to being shut out.

She wasn’t used to caring so strongly for someone, putting so much genuine faith and trust in them. An image of her mother flashed through her mind, and Din caught a glimpse of pale silver eyes, wavy black hair, and a feminine, oval face. The only obvious resemblance shared with her daughter was in their light skin tone, and the delicate curve of rosy lips.

After a moment, Din felt a need to answer Sarah’s unintentional revelation of someone else she cared about with an exchange of his own.

As he concentrated on who it was he wanted her to see, who he desperately wanted to introduce her to, Sarah’s emotions turned into something soft and riveting as she struggled not to act like a love-struck fool at the thought of being introduced to someone Din equated to immediate family.

Forgemaster Werlaara. The gold-tinted Beskar helmet with a stylized front visor of almond eyed tips that stretched the horizontal bar of the black viewing port. A thick pad of curled, tawny fur wrapped over the back of her shoulders like a cape that only reached mid-back, and neatly matched her brown leather sleeves underneath a solid maroon breastplate.

As their thoughts and emotions mingled, Din reflected that it was difficult to believe they’d only known each other a handful of months, and yet, he felt as though he had known Sarah for cycles worth of time. He figured that connections like this, so intimately entwined, had been a large bridge for deepening their relationship. Sarah felt similarly, and he caught her brief flash of curiosity and frustration over not knowing  _ why _ they shared this bond.

For all its usefulness and her no-longer secret delight in having this unique connection that brought them closer, it could be smothering at times; it was distracting, to handle both her own emotions and the flood of another person’s. On rare occasions like today, she wasn’t able to distinguish what was hers and what wasn’t, and it wrecked her ability to concentrate, unsettled her own foundations.

Din almost felt guilty that he didn’t feel any urge to apologize to her for the bond - he had no control over either its creation or its endurance as far as he was aware, and… He liked it. He liked that it granted her a better understanding of him, without the need to put complicated thoughts to actual words. Din liked that when his mood wasn’t actively souring her own, he was able to draw her out of her own emotional funks just by being a steady, positive presence she could depend on.

He’d seen it multiple times, the way she reacted on cues no one else recognized. There was an undeniable intimacy and a rare, purely genuine quality to it that he treasured.

Din liked that the bond brought them closer, that it was something uniquely shared between the two of them which no one else could intrude on, and he caught Sarah’s shy pleasure at the possessive way he regarded her. She was relieved to know his thoughts on this, that it didn’t disturb him as she had often worried it might, in spite of his verbal assurances in the past.

This was… trust. She understood just how vulnerable something like this could be, how easily it could be abused or misused, and she cherished that. It was often difficult for her not to look deeper than she felt was polite, even though she yearned to know what he was thinking beneath the inscrutable helmet. Especially so during times like today, when she wanted to understand what he was going through, when she wanted to support him, and words were difficult to voice.

Din gave a deep, wuffling sigh, and didn’t hide his thoughts from Sarah as his arm tightened its hold over the back of her shoulders. He  _ didn’t _ want to talk about what he was going through. The words lodged in his throat, got stuck on the tip of his tongue. He didn’t even know where to begin.

But he could show her. He could let her feel what he did, except this time, with the context to go with the emotions so she would understand.

The massacre that had occurred here in these tunnels, instigated largely by his own hand. He’d gone back on the bounty for Grogu and instead rescued the very child he’d turned in, and the streets of Nevarro had become a hellacious shoot-out. One Mandalorian with a precious life to guard, against an entire Guild of bounty hunters, until the entirety of his home covert had intervened.

No one had blamed him for the resulting deaths. Deaths that hadn’t even happened during the fight over a bounty prize - the Imperials had attacked shortly after, that much he knew. Probably while his extended family was busy packing up the covert to relocate it.

No one had looked at him and pointed out the skewed numbers - one Mandalorian, one Foundling, saved at the cost of at least thirty, forty lives.

But he did. It weighed on him, every night, every single night as he recited the names of fallen warriors in a generations-old Mandalorian ritual of remembrance, and not even knowing if some he said were still alive, or if he missed someone. He did not know who remained.

Missing a name was the worst.

Din felt Sarah’s restrained curiosity as she tried not to pry, only to listen in this strange, wordless exchange, and he soundly brushed her hesitation aside to let her see. The regret, the sorrow. The pile of helmets in the entryway later that week as he had knelt to pick one up, Cara, Greef, Grogu, and a droid behind him. Their secrecy was their survival, and they had compromised it for the sake of himself and the child he protected. The way his throat had closed over words when the Forgemaster had entered the space, had sent him on his way with the jetpack he still needed to master, and the Mudhorn signet he now shared with his tiny, precious clan.

In the face of his grief, his friend and lover returned a soothing warmth Din hadn’t known he’d needed until she was here and offering it to him, hadn’t known how desperately wanted to submerge himself in the security of being comforted.

He didn’t just want it - he  _ needed _ it, and all the ache coalesced into something bittersweet as Din’s gratitude for Sarah’s presence mingled with his delayed mourning, the emotional turbulence he had put off and off and off until there was no more running away from it.

Abruptly, he wanted to show her what this place had once been like, before the genocide the Empire had carried out. Before blood had stained the walls, before it’d been gutted and abandoned as just another Mandalorian ruin, soon to be lost to time as so many others had been before. 

And Din was pleased to find that she wanted to see. He wasn’t sure how he’d have felt if she hadn’t, if she’d been entirely uninterested, and Din didn’t stop to wonder.

Sarah gasped quietly as Din concentrated on an old memory. Long before he’d ever accepted the bounty mission that had led him to the child he now cared so deeply for, which Sarah was surprised to catch a glimpse of his thoughts on. He showed her the first day he had entered the room they now stood in.

~*~

Sarah looked through Din’s eyes as their thoughts melded together into one seamless, amalgamous puddle of shared consciousness. Details about what he looked like in this memory filtered through to her, supplied by Din’s subconscious. He was a much younger man, probably in his early twenties, with a spring in his step and a dented set of red, durasteel armor.

His helmet was pure Beskar, with leather flaps that hung down over the back of his neck and the sides of his head, and left his face half-way exposed except for a dark visor that protected his eyes.

A child’s helmet, one he’d worn since he’d first accepted a place in the  _ Mando’ade _ as an orphan of war. It had been reforged and adjusted over the years as he’d grown, as was pragmatic tradition.

Sarah guiltily tried not to get excited over the unexpected flicker of a remembered reflection as it broke through Din’s focus in response to her own curiosity about the headgear; his own helmeted face stared back at him, mouth and jaw exposed, just barely an adult. The strong, squared jawline matched the impression of his features Sarah had formed in her head during her tactile explorations of his face, and she could see in this youth the man he would one day become.

The man she loved.

Din Djarin muttered something audible by her ear that she was too distracted to understand, but she felt the rising swell of his emotional response to her drifting thoughts, and the soft admonishment for her to pay attention.

He wasn’t used to being so easily distracted, and Sarah’s wavering focus was affecting his own. He was even less used to  _ liking _ it, a dangerous thought he frequently tried not to dwell on.

Sarah sheepishly turned her attention back to the memory he was trying to share with her, and through his eyes, she saw what had once hung above the archway of the forgeroom. It was an exact copy of the skull pendant Grogu wore, which had once belonged to Din Djarin before he’d given it to the Foundling. Made of pure Beskar, the Mythosaur’s face announced to all who recognized it that this was the territory of the  _ Mando’ade. _

Din returned puzzlement at Sarah’s brief curiosity over contemplating the strange mounting marks she’d seen on the wall, before his attention diverted forcibly back to the images playing through their minds.

The space here was warmly lit, even welcoming, with the main smelter a glowing red that reflected off the top ventilation chute. Around the bottom ring from the holes Sarah had seen, small jets of bright blue flame shot up into the air in deadly points, a necessary insulation of heat.

Din knew that it was essential to keeping the smelter’s contents free of drafts inside the carefully sheltered area, as well as being a useful heat-source for keeping actively worked metal hot during forging.

But mostly, it just felt... Magical. This was a sacred space, and it was an honor to step foot into it.

And then, Sarah saw her. Forgemaster Werlaara, moving with graceful movements that belied the stiff nature of her uniform. Her upper thighs were encased in a skirt made of bands of dark brown leather, and matched the gauntlets she wore. It was strange to see a Mandalorian with such a light array of armor - she was the first Sarah had witnessed who had no vambraces at all.

_ ‘She doesn’t use them,’ _ Din remarked in an off-hand, distracted manner.

As the scene unfolded, Sarah’s breath hitched as she realized what, exactly, he was showing her.

The forging of his helmet. The one he wore right now.

Pride swelled in Din’s chest, mingled with an aching longing.

This was the day he had become a man. This was the day he’d taken his final Oath, the one that permanently bonded him to the  _ Mando’ade, _ and granted him the promise of a place in the  _ Manda. _

The Forgemaster spoke, but Din couldn’t quite remember the sound of her voice, the exact words she’d said, so it came to Sarah more as an impression of conversation than a literal depiction of it.

Din Djarin sat on a short stool in front of a low, rectangular table Werlaara joined him at on the opposite side, her back to the forgeworks, and Sarah’s breath caught when she saw the image through his eyes of his helmet being set on the table between them.

The moment the metal thunked softly on the dark wood, Sarah was drowned by a chaotic flood of Din’s thoughts as he lost his focus in a flood of strong emotion.

Panic surged from her partner in the present as he struggled not to think of what his face looked like, of the youthful features now bared to open air in this memory, viewed only by the Forgemaster as she calmly collected his headgear, and brought it away to be melted down and reworked to its final form.

Din Djarin  _ wanted _ Sarah to see him. Desperately. He wanted to show her what he looked like, for her to know him as precious few did, for her to have that connection. He railed against the restrictions of tradition that prevented this simple yet extraordinary exchange most in the galaxy took for granted.

He wanted things to be  _ equal _ between them. Din had seen her face without an obstacle between them, and though she’d offered assurances, it still didn’t feel like enough to him. Sarah had touched his features as no one else ever had, but he had also touched hers, and somehow, it wasn’t quite enough.

He wanted  _ more _ , and it terrified him.

All this burst to life in the matter of mere moments, and Sarah hastily withdrew from Din’s mind as his thoughts diverted wildly. The first thing she saw when she opened her eyes was Grogu peeking up at her with a soft, warbling coo as he turned his face away from the fabric of Din’s armpit.

_ “Shhh,” _ she soothed, and rested her head against her partner’s shoulder as Din’s quick, shallow breaths made his chest heave against them both. “You have a cute jaw,” she murmured before she could stop herself, then turned her head to press a kiss to the edge of his throat, just above the line of fabric of his shirt collar. “I don’t need to see more. Not yet,” she added softly, and her heart fluttered at the thought.

She really thought she  _ should _ be feeling more aghast at the idea of a more permanent bond between them when she’d really only known this man for a handful of months; Din Djarin would not be allowed to show her his face until and if they were married, and Sarah struggled to shove the chaotic thoughts that knowledge provoked aside to focus on the moment she was in right now.

Din sucked in a sharp, hitching breath, then relaxed. Marginally.

At least the tension in the air this time was of a different nature. This was bearable. He was focused again; Sarah was relieved for all their sakes to see Din drawn out of his depressive funk. His hold on her shifted, and he adjusted Grogu higher up in his arm. Sarah reached up to cup her Foundling’s head in one hand, and gently brushed a thumb over the hairless ridge of his eyebrows. Content, the child snuggled back into his surrogate father’s hold with a sleepy mumble.

“So… We’re looking for clues,” Sarah prompted some time later, as the silence stretched.

“I don’t think we’ll find any,” Din answered roughly. The air around him drew taut, distressed, and Sarah swallowed thickly.

“What exactly are we looking for?” she asked quietly.

It was several moments before he replied, and Sarah found she missed the much quicker, intimate exchange of mental conversation.

“A legend.”

Sarah frowned. That… Was neither what she expected, nor overly helpful. She knew so precious little about Mandalorian lore as it was, and the room was pretty barren.

As it was, she felt like this entire place was a tangible myth brought to life. The only other thing she could think of was the child they held between them - Grogu, a young Jedi, was in and of himself a legend in the flesh.

As she looked down at the Foundling, an idea struck like a flash of lightning.

Din stiffened in her hold and turned his head at the same time Sarah did, and together they looked at the entryway to the forgeroom. She wasn’t surprised when the child was pressed into her chest at the same time Din let go of her, and Sarah hastily gathered Grogu up as the Mandalorian made for the entrance with long, quick strides.

“The Mythosaur?” Sarah questioned eagerly as she trotted after him.

“The marks you saw,” he responded.

She didn’t understand what he meant to imply, but Sarah figured it wouldn’t be long in coming as he stopped and turned to look up at the stained stone.

She reached Din’s side just as the air around him bubbled out with an invisible, dazzling display of triumph and positivity that was made more pronounced by how dramatically different it was from his mood before.

“Constellations,” he murmured, and Sarah’s eyes widened. The seemingly random screw-holes suddenly took on an entirely new meaning as she examined the small clusters, then quickly dropped her gaze.

She didn’t want to commit them to memory.

“Do you know what ones they are?” she asked instead, and peeked at him. Din’s shoulders were thrown back, feet braced firmly in a sure, almost proud stance, and the beskar helmet remained utterly still as he stared upwards.

Several heartbeats later, he finally turned to answer her.

“Yes. Let’s go,” Din ordered brusquely, and made to move past her even as Sarah turned to follow.

She almost walked into him when he abruptly stopped, then spun to face her. Sarah was startled by his gloved hands coming up to gently frame her face, and Din bowed his head to rest the cool curve of his helmet against her forehead as he heaved a ragged sigh.

_ “Ori’vor’e,” _ he rumbled quietly. Sarah found herself blushing at his emphatic gratitude, and smiled. The smile widened when Grogu spoke, short and sweet.

_ “Bu-ir,” _ he burbled.

Din’s helmet tilted a fraction as he no doubt looked down at the child, and one of the hands on Sarah’s face dropped to gently touch his fingers to Grogu’s head.

Then they were moving again, and Sarah took a last lingering glance around the place that had once been home to many Mandalorians, whom she’d glimpsed with vivid clarity through Din’s memories.

Sarah was glad to leave the haunted shell that it now was behind as they made their way back up into sunlight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun Trivia:
> 
> Yep, chapters are getting *much* longer in length, which is why updates have slowed down. I've also been flooded with work this week, so that's dramatically cut down on the time I have to write. Fret not, story is still being worked on and will be for much time to come :3
> 
> I've also confirmed it: I'll have to split this into at least two books; I'm three pages away from hitting 400 pages total, and with what else needs to happen yet... yeah XD So... get hype for a series I suppose? This book was originally thought to be 500 pages long, but I really didn't know how big it'd actually be for the story I want to tell. Now I have a much clearer idea!
> 
> This chapter was a real struggle for me, more than probably any other I have written. Din and Sarah's mind-melding stuff was re-written several times, as was his apology scene. I felt like this was a really crucial moment for them though. Originally, Sarah was just going to nod, mm-hm, and talk to Din later about him brushing her off when he was very obviously (to her) super-duper *not ok.*
> 
> Then I remembered empathic-ness is her *thing* and Gideon practically turned her mind over in on itself just from her distantly connecting with him for a mind-trick, and I realized it'd be even worse for her experiencing the emotional feedback off Din.
> 
> I think it should be pretty clear in the story, but for those who are curious for confirmation; yes, Sarah gets "passive" emotional reads off people, some stronger than others. She can find out more if she actually tries to. With Din, however, there's little choice. She can try NOT to pry all she wants, but she's still going to get a steady read of some level on him, and always more clearly than she would other people. 
> 
> Sarah also originally asked him to explain why he was apologizing so I could dump the lore of why "Ni Ceta" is such a strong apology, then I realized Sarah just... wouldn't. Not in this particular situation, anyhow.
> 
> I feel very clever about the constellations clue. Not gonna lie, I had no idea what clues Din would have to find until they were actually exploring the chamber and I was sitting there going "WHERE WOULD YOU HIDE SOMETHING OBVIOUS BUT SUBTLE??? IN A S E W E R???? OR A GUTTED FORGE ROOM IN SAID SEWER????"
> 
> Thank you, little Grogu, for sparking the idea. I love that Mythosaur-skull necklace.
> 
> Admittedly... this chapter could use a lot more polishing. I am very antsy to get it published since it's been so long since I've updated, and I'm busy working on new content, so... this is as good as this one gets for now xD if I do any major updates down the road, I'll post notices as usual.
> 
> \---
> 
> Mando'a Translations:
> 
> Soo-goo aka Su'cuy - "hi" informal hello Grogu doesn't quite pronounce right.
> 
> Slaat'ulik - "Mudhorn" the animal Din's clan signet is crafted after.
> 
> Buir - "Mom / Dad"
> 
> Werlaara - I refused to just call the badass armorer "The Armorer/Forgemaster" for the duration of this fic, so I set out to pick a name for her. I thought the archaic word in Mando'a for "Myth" was a great name for her. It just... suited her XD and I love names that are low-key just nods to a core trait of the character heh. I think there's a name for doing that, I don't recall it.
> 
> Mando'ade - Mandalorian's name for themselves.
> 
> Manda - the Mandalorian afterlife
> 
> Ori'vor'e - a very emphatic thank-you. "thanks a lot / thanks a million" sort of thanks.
> 
> Mythosaur - not a Mando'a word (I think? xD) but very important to Mando culture and lore. These were reptilian creatures said to be the size of a small city, that occupied the planet Mandalore when the Taungs (the very first Mandalorians) settled it. The Mythosaurs are said to have been hunted to extinction... when they weren't being ridden by a Mando :3
> 
> I like to headcannon Mandalorian armor tends to be very light on the legs - no back protection except on the torso! - because their kits were traditionally designed to be comfortable for riding mounts, then later, things like speeder bikes, etc.


	23. First Impressions

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So it's been a while since my last update, comparably for how fast previous chapters have come out. I've been writing! ;D
> 
> Got through a big writer's block on this chapter.
> 
> For those of you dying to see more of Boba x Shand  
> this chapter is for you. It's slow burn, as everything I write is, but it's there.

After far too long spent in the air, Boba Fett had finally been willing to call a break for longer than a scant few minutes, both to conserve fuel and to feed their empty stomachs with a proper meal.

He stood with Fennec in the cramped upper living level of his ship,  _ Slave I _ still and silent in its parked position. The main hall was visible through a narrow doorway from where Boba stood next to the ladder of his bunk, eating dry strips of fruit. His partner sat nearby, finishing off the last of her bowl of reconstituted rations with a scrape of a metal spoon against the bottom.

Their defected Imperial medic was in the shower to purge the last remnants of stench with a new change of clothes waiting that Fennec had purchased from a small, obscure village found during their fruitless hunt. Boba was relieved to erase the most visible signs of Imperial presence from his ship.

It brought back memories best left forgotten.

Boba picked up another strip of the bland fruit sticks off his small plate, and contemplated his surroundings even though he already knew every inch of his ship inside and out, down to how many nicks were on the magnetic tuning antenna below the main hull - thirty-seven.

It wasn’t often that they really had down-time like this, and Boba found he didn’t know what to do with it. There was nothing to do, no cleaning or maintenance that hadn’t already been done and done again. There was no next stop, no predetermined path to execute. He had no leads to pursue, no tracks to follow.

In the calm atmosphere made uncomfortable purely by being so unfamiliar and alien to him, Boba took a moment to examine his partner. Fennec was nearly as familiar to him as his ship was, yet much newer in his life, so there was a fresh novelty to her presence that hadn’t quite worn off in the handful of months they had traveled together.

Boba would take anything to distract himself from the gnawing frustration and strangled hopes that he had learned to live with daily.

Her sharp features and light olive skin tone somehow managed to make her fit in with the environment of his mobile home; cold, harsh, and deceptively ordinary at a glance.

Fennec Shand was an easy woman to underestimate. She was just a little taller than ‘petite’ at half a head shorter than Boba, and her body was well toned, yet not overly muscular. Her tailored black clothes and skirted overcoat were trim and tidy, without the wear and tear most hardened warriors and bounty hunters possessed, which in and of itself was a clue as to the threat she posed.

If one was even aware she was a threat.

Fennec caught him looking, and Boba didn’t turn his gaze away as she raised a single thin eyebrow at him.

He opened his mouth to speak then at the sound of a familiar beep, instead shut it and yanked up the sleeve on his arm. Boba stared unblinkingly at the tiny display discs that showed green-line readouts of positional data.

It flickered once, then returned… and stayed. Boba remembered to breathe.

“We have a heading?” Fennec guessed.

“Yes; strap in,” he ordered as he spun around and stalked down the long inner hall of the ship, his lunch abandoned on the counter. He heard the sounds of Fennec hastily shutting it up in the cabinet before her footsteps then rushed, light and quick, to the door of the fresher.

Three sharp raps on metal over the sound of running water.

“Shower time’s ov--”

“Leave him,” Boba interrupted her as he climbed up the ladder. He wasn’t willing to wait, not when the Razor Crest was a short hop through Hyperspace away, and currently stationary on the planet of Nevarro. Even better, the transmission was still holding steady.

“Hold on tight,” Fennec called as an amused warning instead, then rushed to her own chair and vanished from Boba’s line of sight as he ignited the idling engines into full thrust, and they began to lift. Ruselm’s muffled shout of protest was just barely loud enough to be heard.

Boba tuned out the following litany of obscenities when  _ Slave I _ began its rotation sequence, and the sound of running water stopped.

In his own personal bubble of furious silence, Boba punched in the coordinates and began the calculations for setting their course through Hyperspace. They would be ready to begin the jump by the time the hull cooled enough after leaving the atmosphere.

~*~

An immaculate Imperial Cruiser maintained a singular position, suspended in an endless abyss of black that was dotted by distant stars, visible through the control-bridge’s main viewport. Moff Gideon stood in the exact front-and-center of the room, feet shoulder-width apart, fingerless-gloved hands clasped behind his back.

Perhaps the others on duty at their control stations thought he stared out at the galaxy and contemplated vast problems, considered the logistics necessary to maintain the progressive growth of an entire Empire, or pondered where next they would make port. Perhaps they thought he used the time to reflect on recent events; If so, they would be partially correct.

Moff Gideon stared only at his own reflection, a dim ghost of himself that looked back and met his gaze, stars obscuring his dark features like he was one with the universe itself. The unwavering stare mirrored back to him was among the few pairs of eyes Gideon had ever felt were worthy to maintain eye-contact with beyond initial assessment.

His most valued lieutenant, Surra Vance, was one of those rare individuals. Unlike some of the others, she was also still alive. Vance was a strong, efficient woman, capable and competent, and had served under Moff Gideon for the past fifteen cycles with unshakeable loyalty. She had been the one to orchestrate his escape from New Republic prison so many years ago, before Gideon would have been executed by foolish idealists without the stomach for his genius.

Vance understood his ambitions, supported his work.

Work that had been… interrupted.

Slowly, deliberately, Moff Gideon raised a hand.

Nimble fingers barely touched his face as Gideon studied his crooked nose. It had been completely shattered, and he was fortunate that the cartilage hadn’t shot into his brain, which could have killed him outright.

There was no natural way to hide the brutal breakage; Gideon’s nose now curved in a wavy line, with the nostrils no longer aligned and centered, but awkwardly canted up on one side.

In all his years serving the empire, he had sustained few injuries, all minor. Even during his brief capture during the first years of war between what had at the time only been a pitiful rebellion against the might of the Empire, Moff Gideon had not been significantly harmed.

Though reduced to being only  _ nearly _ untouchable, he had remained untouched.

Gideon pressed the tips of his fingers to the bridge of his nose, felt the dull ache of badly healed cartilage. His personal surgeon had offered to repair the damage, to straighten and align the bones so his face would be perfect once more.

That surgeon was now dead.

Gideon closed his eyes, and recalled the woman who had marked him, had drawn blood in the very heart of his territory, in the center of one of the most secure facilities he possessed.

Sarah of  _ Slaat’ulik. _

He could recall every detail of her face so perfectly clearly. The thin brows, the firm press of her lips on a fierce, bold countenance that sent a shiver down his spine. Her brilliant, crystalline blue eyes, the most striking feature - the most  _ important _ feature. It was proclaimed by some that a person’s eyes were the portal to that person’s soul, the very gateway to unlocking their inner essence.

Moff Gideon believed that as a fundamental truth. A being could adopt a misdirecting pose or change their voice, their expression, but the eyes  _ never _ lied.

Sarah’s fearsome glower had held breathtaking passion and fire as she met his gaze without any trace of cowardice; a predator’s silent, baleful challenge amidst the burning, single-minded intensity of her goal, whatever that had been.

Moff Gideon hadn’t been surprised to confirm she had  _ not _ been the long-term spy in his laboratory facilities, a still ongoing mystery. Had she been there to meet with the leak, or perhaps to see Gideon himself? She wasn’t an assassin, surely, or she’d have done far more to try and end his life. Gideon discarded that theory almost as quickly as it had come. Had she hoped to discover his plans, to thwart them? Likely, or perhaps she was only a second-party hired muscle to someone  _ else _ with those intentions - perhaps Din Djarin himself. Where did he come into the picture, and why? What was their connection?

Had Sarah held another objective entirely?

Gideon did not know, and it was… exciting.

He loved a challenge.

And oh, how he hated her. He hated her cleverness, how her cunning escape had been so devastatingly successful. He hated that he admired her quick and deadly wit, how bold she was in action. He had poured over the video logs of the spy’s race through his compound over and over again, each time learning new details, new clues to unravel her way of thinking, even as each answer gained provoked more questions, more curiosities.

He was certain Sarah was the sort of individual you could put into the same situation multiple times over, and each time she would find a new way to approach it.

She had killed the first stormtroopers she’d met with an intriguing blend of ruthlessness and mercy. The first had been slain so quickly, almost instinctual. A true killer.

Yet when the other had cowered, Sarah had hesitated.

She had not hesitated again after that, and it told Gideon two things - the first, that she was skilled, yet inexperienced; the second, that she was one of the most dangerous individuals he could face.

A cold-blooded killer was predictable, and easily understood for Gideon. Ruthless, thorough, and practical above all else, often to the detriment of others. A passionate killer was also easily predicted; those who loved the chase, the thrill, often sought to disadvantage themselves. They wanted an  _ adventure. _

Passionate killers also didn’t tend to live very long lives, unless they learned to balance their cravings with a measure of rationality not often found amidst such individuals.

And then… there was the thoughtful killer. The ones that analyzed what they had done, what they did in the moment, and what they would do next. The ones that spent time to reflect on and quickly learn from recent experiences, who could adapt according to developing needs.

Their intellect and rapid change made them unpredictable, and that made them dangerous; Gideon first had to know what they thought about, and why, in order to determine what they might think later to have a chance at predicting their actions.

Din Djarin was one such individual; a ruthlessly efficient Bounty Hunter with a highly reputable track-record, yet he had upended his career and his life on impulse for the sake of one child. The Mandalorian had ruthlessly slain the storm-troopers of the Nevarro hub, yet had allowed a non-combatant medical officer to live; Gideon knew it was deliberate, for Dr.Pershing had reported first-hand of being held at gun-point.

Which meant Din Djarin had taken the time to calculate and assess the situation, then choose to allow a compassionate risk; he let the doctor live, and only took the child.

Sarah Slaat’ulik was  _ also _ a thoughtful killer, Gideon was certain. She had some semblance of compassion, of morality, or perhaps of an honorable code she adhered to.

Gideon was curious to consider the intriguing notion that perhaps she drew from at least  _ two _ doctrines - trained by Jedi Grandmaster  _ Yoda, _ and associated with a Mandalorian?

She was a powerful Force user, an intriguing mystery of secrets on multiple levels, and Gideon could not wait to have an analysis on her blood. As a full-grown adult, she would be the perfect donor for the ongoing experiments; they would be able to harvest a higher quantity, a more stable supply, than they could of the other asset he had hounded down for some three grueling years since discovering the child had survived the mass executions of the Jedi so many years ago.

Even if Sarah’s Midichlorian concentration was not as high as the child’s impressive count, she would be useful.

“Moff Gideon,” Surra Vance’s sharp, crisp voice sounded from behind. She had approached audibly, with a smart click of her heels on the metal floor. Gideon deigned to turn and face her as his hand dropped back to his side. A brow quirked in wordless invitation, and the mature woman before him in her gray officer’s uniform, nearly two heads shorter in height, launched right into a report.

“The Razor Crest is currently on Nevarro. Our contact confirmed the Asset and the Padawan still travel with the Mandalorian; The Padawan wears an unarmored  _ Kute, _ ” Surra continued, and Gideon’s lips twitched with a satisfied smile as his guess at Sarah’s clan tying to the Mandalorians was confirmed, “And it bears a clan signet matching that of the one Din Djarin now wears.”

Now,  _ that _ was interesting.

Gideon kept his face utterly stoic but for the small quirk of the lips he still wore, and after a brief pause, Vance continued.

“Our contact confirmed the homing beacon to be planted on the Mandalorian’s ship, however, Communications has been unable to get a reliable ping exchange.”

“The device is faulty?” Gideon asked archly.

“Likely; transmission was stable for a period of eight minutes, then resumed irregular reports,” Vance explained.

That wasn’t ideal. Moff Gideon frowned severely.

“Set course for Nevarro immediately, and engage the Dark Troopers,” he decided, then added, “Inform our contact to prevent their egress.” In the short time the jump through Hyperspace would take, the third generation of elite battle-droids would be ready to deploy from powering up out of their deep-freeze hibernation.

“Yes, sir,” Surra Vance replied with a crisp salute, then pivoted neatly on one heel and struck off. Gideon smiled darkly as he turned around to face his reflection once more.

Soon, he’d have both assets he desired.

And Sarah of  _ Slaat’ulik  _ would be his personal mystery to dissect.

~*~

Sarah had a faint headache as she walked with her family down the city streets, and forcibly kept a firm focus on the construction of the suggestion that they were unremarkable and forgettable people, just more dusty travelers in the busy street.

She wasn’t used to the radiating cast of influence causing this much strain on her so quickly, not when she was wide awake and well rested. Sarah figured it likely came from a mix of being mentally wrung-out by the recent emotional roller-coaster ride, and because she was taking extra lengths to be careful right now. She was considerably wary of encountering someone who may recognize the touch of the Force, and kept a close watch on those as they passed to see who might let their gazes linger longer than they should.

She knew some part of her was extra on edge after leaving a place that felt like a haunted graveyard, and the knowledge that this town had once  _ housed _ Imperial soldiers.

As they left the busy part of town behind and entered the narrow pass that led to the Razor Crest, Sarah knew right away that something was wrong.

A stranger up ahead wasn’t actually  _ blocking _ their path, just hanging out at the very end, leaned against the side of the wall of volcanic rock, but…

...he was looking right at them.

Directly.

Unflinchingly.

“Din,” Sarah murmured quietly. A small part of her worried she was being overly paranoid, yet she trusted her instincts, and she wasn’t willing to risk keeping silent; Sarah was certain of her assessment. “That man is seeing through the illusion.”

~*~

  
  
  


Din Djarin had been watching the being Sarah spoke of, and gave only the barest of nods to show he’d heard her warning. The lifeform in question was easily recognizable to Din by the hunter’s uniquely distinctive outfit, paired with an unassuming, lazy posture; Oshorit Vengalph, deceptively humanoid from this distance with a deep orange hood covering his inhuman face, showed no visible change from the last time Din had seen him.

And that had been through the scope of his pulse rifle.

Over the hooded tunic that went to Oshorit’s knees, the bounty hunter wore a brown leather jacket with segmented armor plating as much for show as it was for function, and trim black pants fit into white leather boots that had seen much better days. Two bandoliers crossed the broad chest parallel to each other, not fully visible from Din’s current angle, though he could see the pair of belts around Oshorit’s hips. Din knew them to be well stocked.

They had both served in Greef Karga’s bounty hunting Guild, and Din was willing to wager that Orshorit still did.

Din Djarin exchanged no words with his partner, yet Sarah effectively followed his cues as he shifted his weight forward and took a cross-step, and in silence she fell into place behind him. With the two most precious people in the universe to protect at his back, Din rapidly ran through multiple possible scenarios of the way this encounter could go, all in a manner of scant moments that dragged out into a slow-motion walk of eternity.

A step forward on the pebbly substrate, with Din’s heavy boots crunching much louder than Sarah’s dainty, floating paces behind him.

Oshorit could attack, in one of many ways. Either before or as they drew abreast of him, or perhaps immediately after. The hunter specialized in close attacks from what Din knew of his capabilities, so he didn’t think Oshorit would let them walk far if he intended harm.

Din felt like a live wire, his gaze fixed on the bounty hunter without losing awareness of their surroundings. He kept his head aimed straight as his eyes darted sideways, not betraying his observation of the surroundings. A casual roll of his left wrist during a step pressed the button to turn on the lifeform detection sensor in Din’s helmet.

In his peripherals, he saw that the volcanic cliffs that towered above their heads were empty of any lifeforms. Not even a stray lizard.

Another step, and a breeze kicked up into the narrow lane. Dust and bits of paper garbage drifted in erratic swirls down the length of the otherwise deserted road.

Oshorit could just be here to see them leave, but he didn’t strike Din as the type of individual to get their kicks just seeing a legend out of town. Din’s hand hovered next to the holster at his hip, thumb ready to slip the safety strap and draw his blaster at the slightest provocation.

Another step, and Sarah sighed behind him. Short, quiet, a small puff of tension that betrayed her false calm. Din was certain that she was just as wound up inside as he was.

Oshorit could… talk to him.

“Long time, no see, Mando,” the hunter warbled from barely fifteen feet away. His resonating voice was wet and raspy, unpleasant on the ears. The orange hood dipped and turned, as Oshorit’s head moved in an unnatural seeming way. From within the deep cavity a pair of large, luminous silver eyes watched them, reflective in the setting sun. They caught the glare as Oshorit rolled his shoulders in a shrug.

Din dipped his head once in acknowledgement, and did not slow his stride.

Oshorit shrugged off from the wall, then stepped into their path with his feet planted shoulder-width apart. Black, knobbly hands tipped in short claws gestured out to either side of the hunter as Din halted in his tracks, and laid his hand lightly against the hilt of his blaster. It was an obvious gesture, a silent warning.

Oshorit’s head slowly slid forward out of the hood and into the sunlight, revealing the long, almost horse-like snout of an elongated face devoid of any hair. The hunter’s jowls were deceptively pudgy, but Din knew those jaws could open up wide enough to fit a head inside, with room to spare.

“You haven’t changed one bit, still all silent and serious. I owe you and your friend there a drink, Mando,” Oshorit began, and slowly reached a hand to the back of his belt.

The blaster was in Din’s hand and aimed before the hunter took his next breath, and the hunter froze in place except to hold his free hand up. Oshorit chortled at them.

“No matter how I approached, I knew you’d be edgy, Mando. You always assume the worst of people; I’m here with thanks,” Oshorit explained. “Because of you, I bumped up three ranks in the Guild from the… hah, spots that opened. I’m just fetching a few credits.”

“Keep them,” Din answered shortly. Oshorit began to ease his hand away from his back, and Din relaxed the smallest fraction.

His next move was a mistake.

A rookie level one, the kind of fault Din hadn’t made in many years.

The kind Din hadn’t had to _think_ _about_ in many years until very recently, when he suddenly had more lives to immediately worry about than just his own and a wanted bounty who more often than not was acceptable to bring back dead.

It was a rookie’s mistake, and yet...

When Din heard Sarah’s soft, alarmed intake of breath from behind, he turned his head to look at her, the briefest of sideways glances.

Everything happened at the same time.

The rush of rapidly approaching engines reached Din’s ears even as Oshorit darted sideways with a hand shoved behind his back, and then the hunter threw something forward; Sarah reflexively turned away to protect Grogu even as Din pulled the trigger on his blaster, and saw the plasma bolt rain sparks as it glanced off the armor on Oshorit’s pectoral. It hit barely an inch away from an instant kill.

In the next heartbeat, a small, black sphere landed on the ground with a deceptively heavy  _ thunk, _ was still for a fraction of a second, then split open.

Something foul-smelling and acrid stunk up the air even through Din’s filtered respirator as the biological weapon spewed out a billowing cloud of inky smoke. A small red light lit up next to a tiny alert text on his helmet display that warned of a foriegn airborne substance.

“Don’t breathe it in!” Din shouted in warning to Sarah and Grogu, forced to raise his voice to be heard over the sound of a ship bringing itself down to land.

There wasn’t time to look at who had arrived that had apparently alarmed Sarah, Din busy tracking the brilliant orange-gold blob of color that marked Oshorit’s body through the haze.

“Get to the ship,  _ go!” _ Din ordered roughly, as he charged forward to intercept Oshorit when the hunter made a b-line towards where Din knew his family to be just a few paces away behind him.

Din collided with his opponent, and they hit the ground swinging. Din grunted at a painful jab to his lower stomach even as he clocked the hunter on the jaw with the fisted grip of his gun-hand. While Oshorit was momentarily dazed, Din immediately made to shoot him in the head.

His blaster was knocked aside as they rolled on the ground, and Din growled as he struggled for control, all the while having to avoid the snapping, sharp-toothed jaws of his opponent. Oshorit let loose a savage, animalistic rumble.

This close, Din’s helmet display automatically cut the overlay of color to the lifeform, and Oshorit flickered in and out of live feed and his glowing heat signature every time he drew his head back to prepare another chomping strike.

Din heard a body drop a few feet away at the same time the familiar squeal of his child’s distress sounded, and his blood ran cold.

Oshorit wasn’t going to be a clean kill.

Din Djarin cocked his right arm and jerked it sharply, then extended his hand out as a whorling inferno of flames shot out from his vambrace. He swept it after Oshorit, but the alien leaped back. Brilliant orange plumes chased away a large clearing within the smoke cloud.

The fuel fizzled out on the flamethrower seconds later, though Din knew he had a full reserve in the other vambrace yet at his disposal. He closed in on Oshorit’s signature just as the hunter whirled around to face him in the haze, and Din’s fist smashed into the creature’s right eye with a grotesque squishy feeling submerging his gloved hand. Oshorit went down with a hard thump and a howl of pain, and then they were grappling each other as they rolled through the dust and pebbles.

Din hardly registered that he had gained the upper-hand until he was straddling the lifeform’s narrow chest, and squeezing Oshorit’s thick throat with both hands in a deadly vice grip. Oshorit’s impressive jaws opened and closed repeatedly as the hunter wheezed for breath, one clawed hand scrabbling uselessly at Din’s arms.

With brute force, Din clenched his gloved fingers harder into the soft flesh.

Something clicked by his waist, and his helmet tipped down just in time to see Oshorit’s finger deeply depressed into the detonation trigger on another of his illegal biological charges.

The next thing Din knew was pain. Nearly unbearable,  _ brutal _ pain. Something gooey and wet had coated his torso, arms, and upper thighs. The inner display on his helmet lit up with a disorentating series of warnings and quiet, mis-matched  _ ’ping’ _ alarms, each tied to a different area of his body.

The bounty hunter had released a small explosion of a corrosive, acidic substance, and the thickest globs of it had already begun to eat pin-prick holes through the single layered areas of Din’s  _ Kute. _ Small wires that threaded through his uniform and tiny glimpses of tan skin were now exposed.

Oshorit did not seem affected by the goo as he rolled away while Din desperately shook his arms free of the worst globs of the dangerous, oozing yellow substance, heart hammering. He swept slimey gloved hands over his chest and upper thighs next, and now only a thin smear of the substance still clung to him.

Around him the original, inky smoke cloud was nearly deteriorated, and he caught a glimpse of Sarah pushing herself up onto hands and knees, her cowl held to her face as she coughed into it.

Whatever she’d inhaled, Din was willing to wager it was as temporary as it was quick to incapacitate its victims, or she’d still be down.

Or maybe the kid had somehow intervened? Whatever it was, Din was relieved to see her moving even though he didn’t have the time to dwell on it.

He grabbed his gun off the ground to shoot at the enemy who was circling around them in the haze, and Oshorit kept himself a moving target. Din had barely fired two shots when the acid on his gloves finally ate through the thin layers of leather, and began to sting his palms, painful and sharp. Immediately after, the initial pain turned into excruciating agony as his nerve-endings went haywire.

Din hastily tried to holster his weapon, but his hand did not obey - the blaster clattered to the ground as his muscles spasmed and fire burned up his arms, and a light steam rolled steadily off of his hands. Hands that were needed for… everything. His very livelihood, right there in front of him, and his family at his back, in need of his protection.

Din’s world narrowed to take in every nuance of those details in the harrowing moment that existed between one quick, shallow breath and the next.

Din was used to thinking fast, forced to make a choice that would either get him killed or save his life with no in-between, and only a split second allotted to take in the situation, analyze it, recognize what his options were, and then actually execute his hasty choice.

Din was used to that. It was par for the course in the dangerous lifestyle he had lived.

He wasn’t used to being  _ frantic _ about it.

Din ripped the melting gloves off his hands faster than he’d known they could be removed, and the rest of his nerves lit up with fire over every inch of skin on his palms and the backs of his hands. In the next moment he rolled out of the way of Oshorit’s attack as the bounty hunter opened fire, and Din put himself between his family and his opponent.

Oshorit stopped shooting to wait for the smoky haze his volly had caused to dissipate enough to see. Steam rolled in the air around Din even as the haze began to thin in spots, and he saw that though his Beskar armor was untouched and pristine beneath the yellow goo, the fabrics of his layered  _ kute _ were still steadily dissolving, some at a much faster rate than others as he struggled not to hyperventilate.

Whatever chemical it was, Din suspected it was created for specifically dissolving organic matter.

He fisted a hand over the hilt of the vibro-blade knife in his boot and forcibly disregarded the excruciating burn of his palm as Din drew it just as Oshorit’s heat signature stepped closer, and Din knew the smoke no longer concealed them.

The bounty hunter leaned back and tilted his head as if taken aback by the sight before him. Immediately afterwards, Oshorit laughed as he raised his gun.

Then he was flung sideways, as a new color-blobbed figure stepped into view, and their fist collided with the side of Oshorit’s head.

Din would have thought it was an unexpected ally with perfect timing, if it weren’t for the fact the stranger savagely growled;

“Secure the girl and keep him _ here!” _

“I’ve got her,” came a familiar voice from behind that Din had not ever expected to hear again. Fennec Shand, a wanted mercenary, was supposed to be  _ dead. _

~*~

Fennec Shand was very much alive and well as she wrestled Sarah up off the ground and into a chokehold. Ruselm hadn't needed to identify her in the end, because there were so few people in this scuffle, who else could the woman be but the Mandalorian’s companion?

The fact the weakened stranger had a child strapped to her chest that matched descriptions Fennec and Boba had heard served as further confirmation.

Fennec wasn’t terribly surprised when Sarah immediately stopped struggling at the touch of bare steel to the captive’s exposed neck.

“Don’t move a muscle,” Fennec warned in a low, calm voice.

The girl was utterly still in Fennec’s arms, and it almost took all the fun out of it as Fennec watched the silver-garbed Mandalorian nearby struggle up to his feet, trailing thick swirls of steam as an acidic substance ate away at his protective clothing. The skin of his hands was red and blistered, particularly around the palms.

Fennec reflected with dry humor that it would be just Boba’s luck that the Mando get disintegrated before he could be asked about the armor, though it would take short work to search the man’s ship.

_ “Let them go,” _ the Mandalorian snarled. A chill ran down Fennec’s spine as she regarded the intimidating visor; it was cold and metallic, familiar and unwelcome.

She smiled thinly.

“As soon as--” Fennec’s throat inexplicably closed over the sentence, and she gasped for breath as her windpipe felt as though it was being viscerally squeezed. On instinct alone, she threw an elbow back to nail her attacker.

Except, there was no one behind her; Fennec’s elbow jerked painfully in empty air even as Sarah ripped free.

Fennec stumbled backwards, free to move where she pleased, for all the good that did as her vision rapidly began to go black. The quarry was escaping - she dimly noted the blurring figures of the shiny, silver Mandalorian as he stumbled away from the fight with his family.

Fennec tried to warn Boba, to call for his help, both intentions desperately formed in the nameless, unvoiced cry that rose up in Fennec’s throat and lodged there like an invisible force commanded she be bottled up.

Her knees hit the ground, hard and jarring, and she realized her gloved hands were scrabbling at the pebbly, barren soil.

Just when the pain grew past unbearable and entered the realm of unthinkable, Fennec gasped for breath as she was released right before she felt certain her throat would have been permanently crushed.

For several excruciating moments Fennec could not move, could only blink water from her eyes until she registered the fuzzy retreat of two figures through the dusty haze.

~*~

Boba Fett reflected that he probably could have handled his intro better, even as he dodged a knife from the bounty hunter he had interrupted. With the Mandalorian so close to the Razor Crest and no doubt planning a hasty get-away from the current enemy, Boba had not been willing to take chances.

In some ways, this situation was ridiculously good luck; the Mandalorian’s partner was weakened, and therefore an easy target for Fennec to get ahold of without much risk of harm to herself or their hostages. They couldn’t have asked for a better opening.

The orange-hooded hunter let out a warbling growl before he lunged at Boba, only to skitter aside as Boba neatly side-stepped and removed the Gaderfii staff from his back in the same motion. A blaster was a poor choice for this fight - his opponent was far too quick and inclined to close-quarters combat to make it a reliable shot.

And Boba didn’t mind getting up close and personal with his quarry.

He could hear the distant sounds of Fennec’s confrontation with the tiny Mandalorian family they’d tracked down, and put them out of his mind as he focused on his current fight. He trusted his partner’s capabilities and competence; Fennec would call for his attention if the status quo changed.

Boba just needed the shiny, infuriatingly elusive Mando to stay put long enough that the immediate threat could be removed, and then they’d have time to talk and clear up what was sure to be a spectacular misunderstanding.

The Gaderfii staff whirled through the air as Boba swung the end with the curved, spiked club down at his opponent’s head, and the bounty hunter rolled away. The alien jumped back up to his feet with a fresh, bloody cut drawn across his scalp that oozed black blood to match what dripped from his damaged eyeball.

Sharp-toothed jaws opened wide with a bugalling challenge, a stretching square of membranous flesh that vanished into a shadowed throat full of curved, needle-like teeth.

Few things could surprise Boba Fett, both an experienced hunter himself, and well traveled. Even fewer could elicit an involuntary response that overrode all sense of discipline.

At the unnervingly familiar and unexpected view, Boba flinched; his face contorted for the briefest moments in revulsion as he shied back a fraction of an inch, before catching himself as he halted. He put the rekindled memory of the Sarlac, that wretched desert beast, out of his mind, and made a mental note not to get close to this guy’s head.

Boba rather wanted to keep his.

Boba’s next killing stroke was blocked as the alien caught it in one clawed hand with a wordless snarl, and then the creature snatched something off his belt in his other.

Boba threw himself to the ground at the sight of a spray-device, just in time to avoid an unknown substance as it spittled into the air above him in a short, brief jet.

He felt stray droplets land on his back.

He felt them, because they ate right through the fabric of his robes, stung his back in nearly blinding pinpricks of pain.

And there, two inches in front of Boba Fett’s nose, an improbable sight greeted him. An antique looking blaster lay on the ground, a thin glossy shimmer half-dried over the dirt-caked grip.

Boba didn’t question it, just grabbed the gun and rolled onto his back in one simultaneous movement, his staff temporarily forgotten on the ground as his rifle pressed uncomfortably into his spine.

Ridiculously, some part of him had enough freedom of thought to appreciate the quality of the gun he held - it fired smooth and clean, the trigger held at perfect tension; just tight enough it didn’t misfire if jostled, yet not so much that it could jerk the gun off-kilter by having to exert brute force to depress it.

The alien bounty hunter hit the ground in a heavy thud on his knees, a large, charred pit in the center of his chest, then fell face-forward. Boba sat up, heart still hammering, then almost absent-mindedly shoved the blaster-pistol into his belt. Assured the disturbing bounty hunter really was dead, he turned as he stood to address the others.

And saw Fennec laying in a fetal position on the ground, one hand weakly grasping at the dusty ground, the other cradling her throat.

Boba Fett’s whole world felt like it narrowed and expanded at the same time, a nearly disorientating, harrowing sensation as his senses took in the broader area; smoke haze drifted around the narrow confines of the pass, framed in black volcanic rock which made it feel more cramped than it really was.

Some twenty feet off, just crossing beneath the stone archway, the Mandalorian and his companions ran for their ship, the girls’ footsteps stumbling.

And Fennec, laying there, prone and vulnerable, and obviously injured.

Boba Fett’s feet moved without his say-so as he lurched forward. In the next heartbeat he found himself kneeling on the ground beside his partner, and with careful haste rolled Fennec over onto her back. It took precious seconds, and he heard the distant crunch of boots on the ground as his quarry drew ever father away. He could hear other footsteps now, coming from the town.

Boba ripped open the fabric panel that covered an electronic insert over Fennec’s upper torso, directly above her heart. A thin ring of olive skin peeked between the fabric’s hem and the gray metal frame, and he checked her status report. If the electronic prosthetics that had replaced her main abdominal vitals had been damaged, he needed to move her onto his ship for emergency surgery immediately. If she was injured only on what parts of her body remained natural, then he could get her strapped in and wait to tend her until his quarry had been captured.

Rows of neat, orderly text in tiny letters slowly scrolled over the screen, each displaying a status for certain parts of Fennec’s body, particularly the parts that were mechanical. Fennec gasped hoarsely at him, and Boba put a hand firmly over her mouth without looking up from the tiny digital display.

“Don’t try to speak,” he ordered brusquely. She jerked and turned her head towards the exit of the narrow pass.

Finally, the report finished, and Boba had his confirmation.

Fennec was safe.

He closed his eyes at the sound of engines revving to life, and did not need to look to know the Razor Crest was in the middle of take-off.

Boba Fett did not say a word as he gathered Fennec up in his arms, then booked it for his ship.

There was still a chance he could catch them in the air - the Mandalorian’s gunship wouldn’t be able to jump into hyperspace immediately after leaving the atmosphere, and Boba would have at least a minute or two of time to catch up. At the most, five or ten.

“Idiot,” Fennec wheezed, the first understandable word she’d managed to force out.

“Yes, you are,” Boba retorted gruffly, and ignored the way her sharp-featured face had softened at the edges when she spoke. They passed underneath the open hangar door, and Boba breezed past Ruselm. The boy was half-dressed in his new pants and a towel around his neck, short hair damp and dripping yet.

Ruselm opened his mouth to speak, flushed face furious, and Boba spoke over him.

“Strap in or don’t, we leave  _ now,” _ Boba warned as he deposited Fennec into one of the two main passenger seats. She tried to buckle her harness on her own, and Boba calmly batted her hands away to get it done in a matter of seconds.

He heard more than saw Ruselm join her in the open chair, as Boba climbed up the ladder to the pilots seat.

_ Slave I _ lifted up into the air and began to rotate before he’d even finished putting on his harness straps, or its door was fully closed.

~*~

“I’ll get us up, go strip,” Sarah ordered Din the instant they had run up the ramp and into the Razor Crest. She felt woozy and unsteady as she smacked a hand against the door controls, and it was balanced only by the firm resolve in her chest and the adrenaline that pumped through her veins.

Din didn’t even bother to run to the Fresher first before pieces of armor began coming off. Sarah forcibly turned away from him and the terrifying steam he trailed, then ran for the ladder. Her heart lurched as she heard an unfamiliar sound, yet she immediately recognized it with unquestioned certainty.

Din’s helmet clanged louder than the other pieces of Beskar as it hit the floor, then rolled. The rustle of cloth over his labored, hitched breaths followed Sarah up the ladder.

She threw herself into the pilot’s chair and swiveled to face the main controls. Grogu was sound asleep in his carrier, a heavy weight against Sarah as she flipped the switches to power up the shields and main power thrusters, and skipped several procedural steps in doing so. Sarah did a hasty, slap-shod flight-check even as she was already halfway through powering up the engines to full throttle, propelled by a steady shove on a long silver lever. The Razor Crest rumbled around her, loud enough to nearly drown out the sound of rushing water below her feet as Din no doubt got in the Fresher.

“We’re going up!” Sarah shouted in warning, fairly certain he might hear her. If Din replied, she missed it as she brought the ship up with a lurching roar of the twin engines. They lifted into the air, and Sarah kept a grim hold on the two joysticks that controlled the gunship’s movement in a full gyroscope of capability.

It was a lot of power in her hands, in a viscerally tangible sort of way compared to the more esoteric interactions Sarah had experienced with the Force. This wasn’t something seen or perceived by an indefinable sixth sense, or borne from intuition she already possessed within herself; this was holding several thousand pounds of machinery with as gentle a touch on the sensitive hand-controls as Sarah possibly could, and all the while the metal beast roared around her, through her.

It was different somehow, louder, and more nerve-wracking, taking complete responsibility and control. Though Din had begun familiarizing her with its many controls, he’d never actually granted Sarah permission to fly his ship. She’d never sat in his chair.

Sarah hoped his lessons would be enough as she relied mostly on her own experiences with her personal spacecraft, and what the machine could handle.

She certainly hoped that Din’s gunship would be as forgiving as her little transport had been when Sarah skimped on how long she was supposed to wait for the engines to properly stabilize, and gently pressed her hands forward.

The Razor Crest shot forward with a jarring lurch, and Sarah quickly eased her hands back to take some of the edge off.

The land below rocketed out beneath them as she let the ship fly straight and level to get as much distance between her family and the town behind them, and they weren’t at full speed yet.

Sarah took a deep breath to collect herself, then took a good, thorough look at the gauges and display-boards that broadcasted various stats on different ship functions and components. She confirmed that the most important things were in normal parameters - more than enough fuel, engine’s were still ignited and holding steady as they warmed, and all doors were fully secure.

Sarah engaged the weapon’s control system, then swallowed thickly. The heavy repeating cannons on Din’s ship would be world’s different to shoot than the zippy Tie-Fighter she’d flown, Sarah was certain. She really hoped she wouldn’t have to.

It took her a moment to find the twist-lever to disengage the landing feet next. Pistons whined loudly as they finally retracted into the hull against the force of the wind.

An alert dinged, sharp and succinct, and Sarah glanced down at a black-and-green monitor. A small triangle alerted her to another spaceship entering her fly-space.

She tapped it once to mark it as an enemy to be given priority for proximity alerts and scan for targeting locks, then hastily returned her hand back to the joystick.

With a hasty, silent prayer that Din would forgive her, Sarah banked hard to the right and angled up sharply, and was pleased to find that though much heavier to handle, his ship responded beautifully to the roll of her wrists. It was certainly much easier to fly than the Tie-Fighter had been.

If Sarah weren’t afraid for the lives of her family and herself, she would probably be enjoying this a lot more than she did as she unconsciously kept her lips pressed in a thin, grim line.

She glanced at the screen displays again, and noted the other vessel was giving chase.

With a soft curse, Sarah checked the status on the turbines; two long golden bars progressively filled with a block-line at a time to display temperature distribution. It also served to illustrate other stats of each engine, but she wasn’t concerned about those.

Sarah stared at the monitor for several seconds as she thought quickly.

They weren’t ready to leave the atmosphere, but they would be soon.

She hoped the Razor Crest’s ridiculous streak of good luck when it came to ‘perfect timing’ would hold out, and carefully leveled out the ship before Sarah brought them into a steady, slanted climb.

At least the other ship wasn’t shooting at them… yet.

Sarah restrained herself from letting out a whoop of triumph as they reached elevation to leave the atmosphere just as the turbine display turned green to announce fully stabilized systems, ready for space travel.

She didn’t celebrate, though, because now came the actual hard part.

Sarah knew it took the Razor Crest only two, three at the most, minutes to cool the exterior hull layers of the ship enough to be safe to blast forward into hyperspace.

That was as many as three minutes she would have to dodge their persistent bald stalker, and he wasn’t very far behind them now; In less than a minute, the stranger’s unusual ship would be close enough to engage her in combat.

Sarah was vehemently glad when the rush of water below finally stopped, and she heard the dull sounds of Din’s echoing footsteps.

“I don’t care if you’re butt-ass naked, get up here and strap in. I have to take evasive,” Sarah called over a quiet ping that alerted her to the ship she’d marked entering targeting range.  _ “Osik,” _ she swore vehemently, and grit her teeth.

Metal scraped against metal from below, and then something clicked loudly. A chest, Sarah thought distantly.

She could hold level, just a little longer. They still weren’t being shot at, though that in itself made her worry the bald-guy had other plans.

In her experience, the more dastardly the weapon, or the more precise and fiddly its targeting system was, the longer it took to charge up or sight in.

Sarah tried not to clench her hands on the controls, and instead ended up pushing herself to the edge of the seat in her tension.

Time was up, and she opened her mouth to call for Din--

“I’m here,” he croaked out in a familiar, filter-distorted voice. Sarah heaved a strained sigh of relief as she heard him drop into his seat and buckles click. She jolted at the soft sound, then hastily threw her own harness-straps on one-handed; Sarah had completely forgotten them in her earlier haste.

“I’ll try not to break anything,” Sarah promised, then turned her wrists and rolled them forward.

And experienced the adrenaline-high of the century as the stars around them spun and dipped in dizzying swirls, and the planet of Nevarro loomed below them, bright and bronzed.

The Razor Crest took off at a new downwards angle, then rolled and spun as Sarah brought them into a barrel-roll.

“This isn’t a Tie-Fighter,” Din observed dryly, his voice changing pitch slightly with every change of direction. Against the pounding anxiety and confusing excitement that rushed through Sarah and pounded loudly in her ears, she found herself returning his humor with a short, quick laugh.

Sarah opened her mouth to reply, and her words were quickly stolen into an alarmed exclamation as she banked sharply in response to a warning on the console. A rippling blue streak of ringed light that dissipated into a crackle of electricity in the air, glimpsed out the corner of the cockpit as they whirled away.

Bald-guy’s ship had opened fire.

“That’s an ion-cannon,” Sarah observed bluntly, almost distantly, and was surprised at how alarmingly  _ calm _ her voice sounded when inside she felt sheer panic.

The rare and high-powered weaponry was an elite class of hardware, and Sarah only knew exactly what it was because she’d seen it in use before, first-hand. It had been the same type of weapon used to disable her ship when pirates had tried to board her small cruiser, and was the reason she’d ended up crash-landed despite an otherwise successful get-away.

“Don’t get hit,” Din supplied. His level voice was at war with the rising pitch of anxiety and alarm that spread through the air around him, and the only thing that kept Sarah together was her own resolve and the fact Din’s emotions were laced by the comforting, steady presence of someone who had faith in her. He was stressed, but he wasn’t  _ panicked. _

And… he trusted her.

She could do this.

“I won’t. Are you alright?” Sarah asked as she brought them whipping around and up - or relatively up compared to how they’d been just moments ago in the suspension of outer space - and gained a fraction of distance from their pursuer. Her voice changed pitch as her body strained against the harness-straps, and Grogu’s sleeping weight pressed against her ribs as they rolled and circled.

“I will be,” Din answered gruffly, and Sarah let silence take over as she focused entirely on what she was doing.

Just a little over one more minute, and she could get them ready to go into hyperspace. The ship behind them was likely going to be able to fire off at least three,  _ maybe _ four more shots in that timeframe.

Sarah quickly upped her estimate of shots to more like five or eight possible incoming rounds as she jerked the joysticks back and rotated them at the sound of another targeting alert, and the Razor Crest flipped up on itself and shot upwards. Another rippling pass of blue electric lines dazzled the blackness of outer space before the view spun away.

Right.

Time for more drastic measures. Sarah glanced at the monitor, then reached over and flipped the brightly colored switches for automatically stabilizing pitch, and the override for the safety lock that prevented backwards thrust.

“What ar--” Din’s voice cut off as Sarah jerked the joysticks level then hauled them back as her thumbs squeezed on the reverse buttons, and the ship jerked to an abrupt halt and stuttered.

Though it did the trick, it wasn’t a clean maneuver; Sarah’s shoulders and hips strained against the harness straps as she literally  _ bounced _ in her seat, and Din wheezed behind her once right before the quiet sound was drowned out by the rush of engines.

Bald-guy’s ship - Sarah rather wished she had a name for the stranger - rocketed past them and spun upwards, and she opened fire.

Two shots struck home on the brown-painted hull, only to glance off of hidden deflector shields; they rippled instantly into being, a trailing flood of white, translucent energy, then vanished as quickly as they’d come after the shields powered back down. Sarah was absolutely certain of her assessment in the brief moment she had to observe it - the enemy gunship had  _ selectively _ defended individual sections of its hull as each plasma bolt had come within proximity. Sarah cursed as she swung away.

Whoever this guy was, he had one beast of a ship if it was capable of diverting power to individual functions so flawlessly.

Din’s voice broke the relative silence of the cockpit.

“I thought you promised not to break anything,” he joked.

Sarah smiled thinly.

“It’s still in one piece,” she answered, then grinned as she got around behind their pursuer. “How do I take out his fancy shields?”

“A direct hit to the main engines is the best bet,” Din answered. “On the bottom of his ship, the glowing rings.”

Sarah unconsciously leaned forward as she zeroed in on her given target, following after her zippy opponent.

“Right, got it-- Don’t got it,  _ don’t got it!” _ Sarah hastily corrected as Baldie's ship spun around in mid-flight, and suddenly they were facing each other for one harrowing moment. Sarah  _ swore _ she could see the man’s pale face behind the small cockpit window.

Sarah was also pretty sure she would have torn the wings off of an even slightly lesser spacecraft as she yanked the joysticks left and shoved her wrists forward in a rolling sweep, and the Razor Crest yanked itself in a diving barrel-roll to avoid another electric charge.

“I  _ love _ your ship,” Sarah praised breathlessly.

“You break it, you buy it,” Din answered. She laughed, short and tense.

“What’s mine is yours, what’s yours is mine,” Sarah retorted on impulse. “You can play with my lightsaber once it’s-- Crap, shields are down,” she interrupted herself as the ship jolted around them, and a crackle of electricity flickered over the cockpit windows and vanished into thin air. There hadn’t been a targeting alert, which meant their opponent had shot blind, without a sight-aide.

Blind, and baldie still struck home. Sarah was kind of mad she had enough presence of mind to be impressed; she was not in any kind of charitable mood where this nutcase was concerned.

Sarah clenched her jaws as she took them around, and all the while the ship beeped an incessant alarm until she slapped her hand on the flashing orange button to silence it.

After the dizzying, panic-filled moment passed and she was behind the enemy ship again and opening fire, Sarah realized the mood in the room had dramatically shifted, and it was utterly improbable for the situation.

She could expect many things from Din Djarin. In some ways, Sarah found that her partner was very predictable. She expected his intensity and the way his anxieties and fears always simmered close to the surface despite his outward calm, and she expected the way he was distinctly uncomfortable in this situation. Injured, disadvantaged, and entirely out of his element as Din left the piloting of his spacecraft in her hands, Sarah wasn’t surprised at any of those emotions.

But to feel the brilliant dazzle of metaphorical warmth and light she’d only sensed from him a scant handful of times, was nothing short of baffling.

“How can you be  _ happy _ in the middle of a space shoot-out?” Sarah demanded.

~*~

“You fly good,” Din deflected awkwardly, an honest assessment in place of a more honest answer, because there was no way he could admit to the source right now. His admiration of Sarah’s capability had little to do with the warmth that had flooded his chest and had made an involuntary curve draw across lips that rarely smiled.

Sarah had no way of knowing, but her casually-given comeback was closely related to a large part of a far more serious vow, and Din was not inclined to fluster her in the middle of a fight. He didn’t have anything to do besides observe and be ready to offer advice if she needed it, and so far, his daring partner was holding her own as Sarah took them into another dizzying spin

She definitely possessed a natural knack for flight; Din’s uncertain observations of her handling of a stolen Tie-Fighter were now confirmed not to have borne of pure beginner’s luck; she clearly had experience to draw from. Sarah seemed to rely more on her own intuition to fly it than on the electronic displays, which Din took as a good sign.

It wasn’t the cleanest work, but Din knew the Razor Crest could handle the crazy acrobatics Sarah flipped them through, sometimes far too jarringly to really be called a successful maneuver. This particular model of ship was designed around being highly mobile, and was its greatest asset. It didn’t look like much on the outside, but the inner workings were pristinely maintained.

Din really liked his ship.

It wasn’t a sentiment he had towards much of his equipment; everything had a function, a purpose, a necessity linked to it. He had little need or desire for sentimental objects, and possessed only a very scant handful. But he  _ liked _ his ship.

And he really rather hoped the ‘Crest made it out in one piece with them. With their opponent shooting at them with a weapon to disable rather than to destroy, Din upped his optimistic outlook. If the bald guy tried to board, he would be met with one hell of a fight.

They still had the advantage.

Water splotched onto the screen display and blurred out part of his view as Din’s wet hair dripped inside the helmet, and his breath hitched at the dull sting of recent wounds every time the harness straps dug into his bare torso. He wore only a spare pair of old, dark gray pants and his helmet, and most of Din’s visible skin was speckled with bright, angry red chemical burns.

“Where are we going?” Sarah demanded breathlessly. “We can hit hyperspace in fifty seconds.”

“Set course for Tatooine - it’s pre-coded in the flight path list. We’ll make sure we lose him first,” Din answered.

“Got it,” Sarah confirmed, short and succinct.

He was passionately looking forward to being able to stop, properly tend his injuries, and get  _ dressed. _ It was hair-raising to be so exposed and vulnerable even in the confines of his own ship, and there wouldn’t be time to don his acid-contaminated armor in the event of a boarding.

~*~

Boba Fett could not  _ wait _ for this maddening chase to end. He wasn’t rusty with his flight skills, so he had to assume the pilot he faced actually knew something of what she was doing.

He knew it was the girl who was flying, because he’d caught an improbably clear view of her in the cockpit with the bare-chested, helmeted Mandalorian behind her.

If this situation wasn’t so dire, Boba might have laughed his amusement at the ridiculous sight.

An indicator light lit up to announce the ion cannon fully charged, bright and beautiful, right as he got behind the Razor Crest with a solid line-up--

And then they were careening through space again in a new direction, and Boba flipped his Firespray ship around as he rolled and swerved to keep on his quarry’s tail.

“I think I’m going to hurl,” Ruselm complained from below.

“Do it and I’m ejecting you off the ship,” Boba growled.

He thought maybe Fennec laughed weakly, and then he was winging behind the Mandalorian’s ship once again as its pilot failed to shake Boba off.

If this were a fight to the death, he ruefully mused that he’d have already had a good chance at blowing their ship up.

But he needed the Mandalorian alive, and Boba preferred not to risk sending his armor - if it was even still on-board - scattered through open space.

One perfect moment, before he was out of time entirely.

That’s all he needed.

In the next heartbeat, Boba got it. The Razor Crest went level for one breathtakingly beautiful moment, and he eased back the trigger for the primed and ready ionic charge that would disable the ship he chased.

Then alarms sounded from every direction at his flight station as Boba’s cockpit window was suddenly full of  _ gray.  _ Blue-white electricity rippled and skittered in a comparably tiny patch over the metal wall that had appeared fresh out of hyperspace,  _ right _ between Boba and his quarry.

The universe was mocking him, Boba was certain.

He swore as he yanked the duel joysticks to bring them in a sharp upwards thrust to avoid collision. An unspeakably massive wealth of gray metal flew past before they spiraled away from what was quickly revealed to be an Imperial Cruiser.

“Th-the Moff’s found me!” Ruselm cried in dismay. “We need to  _ go!” _

Boba had a feeling the ship wasn’t here for the defected medical officer. He would place good credits on the bet that this unwelcomed hunk of metal was here for the same reason he was - to capture the Mandalorian.

Or probably more specifically, the Mando’s clanmates.

Boba didn’t really care what their aim was.

He didn’t like someone getting in the way, and he liked even less the fact turret guns on the blasted thing rotated to follow his ship as they opened fire. There was no way  _ Slave I’s _ interrupted ionic charge had actually damaged so large a vessel, but the Imps clearly weren’t taking the insult lightly. Boba rather thought it went the other way around; he’d be done with this if it weren’t for their intrusion.

Boba whipped around and under the thing, and caught sight of the Razor Crest just in time to see it seemingly distort in his vision in a slow, subtle stretch, then snap away.

Vanished.

Gone.

“Shit,” Fennec commented hoarsely.

“Th-that means we can go now, right?” Ruselm pleaded. “I really thin--” the boy made a strangled choking noise Boba recognized. Fennec had probably hit him in the throat.

For several seconds, Boba stared at the empty space the Mandalorian’s spacecraft had just been.

He was so furious, he didn’t even have the voice to vent his rage and vexation as he silently punched in the coordinates for initiating an emergency hyperspace get-away just as the first Tie-Fighter launched into space.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Boba's such an optimist.  
> "Ok we can have a nice, civil chat-over-hostages after this fight scene is over, clear everything up--"  
> "ok well I can tend Fennec after I capture these guys I guess--"  
> "well shit that's an Imperial cruiser."
> 
> Don't worry Boba. You were so close. Next time, you'll get them. Definitely. Maybe.
> 
> FUN TRIVIA:
> 
> So, this chapter was like... hella hard to write. At least parts of it were. I also spliced it it down into two chapters from the original length, as I was both super antsy to get a chapter posted as it's been almost two weeks now, aaaand because it was getting... long xD
> 
> I got real hung up on the fight scene for Boba and Oshorit. I needed Boba to end up with Din's blaster, which wasn't originally in here, and I also went back in to spruce up Din's fight with flamethrower and funsies.
> 
> I really wanted Oshorit to be a character who could go toe-to-toe with and pose a serious challenge to our favorite two Mandos. Someone much harder to face than badly equipped Quarren or lousy-shot stormtroopers.
> 
> Originally, Oshorit's face was more like a snake, then I thought it'd be more upsetting if his face was truly completely "alien" and not just "looks-like-something-else"
> 
> Boba: "I don't mind getting up close and personal"  
> Boba five seconds later: "I tAKE IT BACK ABORT ABORT"
> 
> I have decided that writing arial combat scenes is one of my favorite things. There's just something fun about a character being able to whip around in any direction.
> 
> Poor Din and Ruselm :'D both of 'em caught tumbling around in the shower during flight buwuahuaha.
> 
> \----  
> Mando'a Translations:
> 
> Kute - the bodysuit worn under Mandalorian armor in its entirety
> 
> Osik - "shit" swear word
> 
> Slaat'Ulik - "Mudhorn" See chapter 13's notes for more info


	24. Dynamics

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (Maybe?) Trigger warning: Needles (shots)
> 
> I normally wouldn't, but fuck, *I* hate needles with fierce passion and even writing one of the scenes here for medical care made me squirm XD
> 
> Not sure if this warning tag is really *needed* but there it is just in case, for those who need to B R A C E.

Surra Vance kept a sharp eye on the clock strapped to her wrist as she waited for the appropriate amount of time to pass before she dared return to the control bridge, where Moff Gideon would be awaiting her report.

It wasn’t that she was afraid Gideon might hurt her in his fury - no, she knew herself too valuable to be considered expendable by the Moff. Pride swelled in her chest, the indefinable feeling of being held in esteem by one who rarely granted such a privilege.

Surra just didn’t like seeing which corpses were dragged out of the room. Every now and then, it ended up being someone she actually liked, and Surra had learned it was easier to pretend they were simply somewhere else on the ship or deployed far away than to see every face.

The thick, layered grey blast doors were open when she entered the long hall leading to the bridge, and Surra was disappointed to note her timing was too early; a pale-faced woman in a janitor’s uniform dragged the corpse of a younger officer out of the room by the ankles, a light trail of smoke drifting behind the body. Surra kept her gaze straight ahead as she refused to look at the lifeless face, and stepped into the room.

Moff Gideon turned to look at her from the opposite end by the observation windows, his unblinking eyes glinting like flecks of obsidian in the fluorescent lighting. A faint glow reflected on his face, and made the black enamel of his cuirass gleam with a brilliant streak of concentrated light. Surra’s eyes darted left to the source.

In Gideon’s right hand, he held a unique weapon - a familiar weapon. From a black hilt with a flat, angled cross-guard, a beam of vibrating, humming energy extended in a flat blade of black plasma edged in white. The core of the unusual lightsaber matched Moff Gideon’s dark eyes and the black abyss of space behind him, like a slice of the galaxy held within a wavering, thin, concentrated line of starlight.

The very weapon Surra had ensured was put into his hands by finding its previous owner, now dead by Gideon’s hand. It was a prized trophy against an old enemy, and it gave her a rush of profound pride to see it held by him. It brought back good memories.

“Moff Gideon,” Surra acknowledged as she always did, accompanied by a smart salute as she came to a halt in front of her leader.

The beam of light vanished as he thumbed the lightsaber off, and his eyes dropped back into shadow. He did not answer her, but she needed no verbal confirmation - his unwavering attention served well enough.

She relayed her report, the confirmation both of the identity of the old Firespray ship and its speculated owner and history, alongside the unpleasant news that the transmission of the homing beacon was still failing to return a clear signal despite active, if infrequent, ping exchanges. They did not know the trajectory of the Razor Crest, where it might exit hyperspace, and it was possible they may not know for some time.

Moff Gideon’s expression changed little; the smallest twitch of his eye, the tightening of his chest as he held his breath for the briefest of moments, so quick and small it was easily missed if one didn’t know to watch for it.

In the face of his dangerous ire, Surra stood calmly at ease. She knew his every tick, his every mood. She knew when it was best to stay silent and out of the way, and when Moff Gideon desired to be approached. He was predictable, in a way, and she waited for him to either grant a final order, or dismiss her with a curt nod, the barest tip of his chin as his gaze would slide away from her. He might strike another, lesser officer to vent his frustration.

Only instead, Moff Gideon backhanded Surra Vance across the face; it was so unexpected, so quick, that she didn’t properly even remember to react until several moment’s had passed and she straightened, eyes involuntarily widened, her hand half-way halted from reaching for her stinging cheek. He had hit hard enough to bruise - hard enough she felt at once numb and alive with pain and aching soreness in the right side of her upper shoulders, neck, and head.

Gideon’s face was alive with silent fury, a familiar madness of passionate emotion in his eyes as he stared her down, and badly startled, Surra blanched before she could stop herself.

Though his deep, resonating voice never raised louder than typical talking volume, Moff Gideon’s weighted words still managed to roll across her like thunder when he spoke.

“I will not tolerate another failure.”

Surra straightened, let her face go blank, let her eyes glaze over in militaristic discipline as she fell into a salute that was so ingrained into her muscle memory it was practically mechanical in execution; her emotional reaction had no place here, right now, visible before him. She threw herself into that distance like it was a lifeline to be clung to.

“Report back to me when you know where she is,” Gideon both demanded and dismissed in the same tone of voice; he made a sharp, impatient gesture with his hand as he spoke that seemed almost involuntary. Gideon’s gaze was already unfocused and far away as he turned away from Surra, back to his own thoughts.

She just barely remembered to acknowledge him with a crisp “Yes, Moff Gideon,” and not a habitual _‘Yes, Sir,’_ which the Moff detested being addressed as.

With a near-shattered composure just barely held together by thin threads of rigid discipline, Surra Vance strode out of the room, and kept walking. She took the long way back to her quarters without consciously deciding to, her body navigating the gray corridors without direct guidance; Vance’s thoughts lingered, stuck in a loop of repeating time on that moment in the control bridge, the loud slap of the leather-backed hand against her face.

The look of fury in Moff Gideon’s eyes, the cold-blooded rage that terrifying inferno still couldn’t bring warmth to. She had seen that look, so many times, had felt the satisfaction at bearing witness to its execution. Had gloated over the execution of his infamous temper on those deserving it.

Almost absent-mindedly, still rather dazed, Surra Vance wondered if this is what they all felt like, those people she had seen be treated to that same temper.

She wasn’t sure whether to be awed, or… Or what, she didn’t know, but the nameless _something_ drifted there, hot and cold and uncomfortable in her heart all at the same time.

Whatever it was, she didn’t like it, didn’t want to face it, so Surra Vance turned her attention on remembering which number hallway to take to get to her own room. She would collect her bearings in private, and hopefully someone would have good news for her by the time she made her way back to the communication’s center.

She didn’t want to think about alternatives.

  
  
  


~*~

“That was close,” Sarah breathed as she slowly sat back in her seat, hands off the joysticks, not quite prepared to relax after that fast-paced, harrowing experience. “That… What _was_ that thing?”

“Imperial cruiser,” Din bluntly answered. Sarah checked and triple-checked the controls to confirm their path was set securely, then finally flipped a switch to unlock her chair’s swivel.

“We’ve got a few hours in hyperspace, let’s get you and Grogu taken care of,” Sarah announced as she spun around. Din’s visor followed her movements. It dipped slightly, and she assumed he was looking at the sleeping child strapped to her chest. One of her hands gingerly settled on Grogu’s sleeping head.

“You’re both… Alright?” Din asked slowly. Sarah smiled to reassure him, though it faltered as she properly took in the sight he made.

“...We are,” Sarah confirmed, distracted. “You, however, are _not,”_ she asserted as her heart gripped with uncustomary panic and dread.

Din looked… awful. Red streaks, blisters, and pin-pricked burn marks speckled the sides of his bare torso and all along his arms, save where his forearms she knew had been covered in the pair of Beskar vambraces. She also marked an absence of burns where his chestplate had been, and the thickest of his armor’s padding, down the frontline of his stomach to the hem of his pants. Water droplets had collected on his skin, and made the gray fabric damp

Judging from the absence of burns above the closure of his pants despite blistering welts hung low over Din’s half-bared hips, Sarah was pretty sure Din had been lucky enough not to have any acid land directly in his lap. It took her a moment to realize where her gaze was lingering, purely innocent at first as she thanked small mercies, yet Sarah still jerked her gaze up.

And realized he was still staring at her.

“...Din?”

He seemed to jolt, shoulders going back a fraction as his helmet lifted, and Sarah wondered if she’d distracted him from deep thoughts. She had always noticed that Din was inclined to long silences and pauses in conversation, and she was beginning to suspect that the man was a secret daydreamer. Maybe _that_ was his vice, except it didn’t quite fit with her knowledge of him.

Din Djarin was, as a general rule, always aware of his surroundings.

“I… might need help,” he said slowly, then turned his palms over so she could see. Sarah sucked in a breath, and she was kneeling on the ground in front of him before she even registered her legs had moved.

The meat of Din’s palms were an angry red in color, with blisters and pitted pockets marring the heavy calluses. A few had actual _holes_ in them, not deep enough to cause a bloody mess, but certainly enough to be very painful. The pads of his fingers weren’t much better off. Sarah felt faint just imagining how painful it must have been for him to climb up the ladder, let alone shower and get dressed.

“I’ll take care of this,” she promised urgently as she put her fingertips with a feather-light touch to Din’s forearm, and coaxed him to rotate his wrists so she could get a better look at the damage.

He nodded once. Sarah scrutinized the Beskar helmet carefully to ensure it was _actually_ fully cleaned of acid, before she planted a hasty kiss to the center of the dark visor, right over where she guessed Din’s nose would be.

She liked the pleasant spike in his aura when she did.

They exchanged no more words as Sarah made her way to the lower level, and took in the mess that had been made on the floor; Din’s armor and the layers of his _Kute_ were scattered all over the place, with smudges of yellow goo here and there where things had slid around. It stank, too - a light sting in her nostrils coupled with the reek of burning natural fibers. The result was something not quite rotten, and not quite sweet, but some unpleasant in-between.

“Do… You have another set of clothes?” Sarah called as she carefully picked her way across the dangerous floor. “I don’t think we can save this,” she lamented as she stepped over his discarded gambeson. At least, she thought it was the main shirt layer - it could potentially be his pants; Sarah wasn’t certain.

Whatever it was, the black fabric was more goo and smouldering steam than actual cloth by now. Small wires poked up from it, and Sarah wondered at their function. Life support sensors, probably. She was pretty sure her own _Kute_ wasn’t wired.

“I’ll make do,” Din answered, and Sarah smiled in sympathy at the distinctly unenthusiastic resignation in his voice. If he didn’t have what he needed, it might just be time for her to show Din how she’d made a large part of her living before she’d met him; sewing.

“I’ve got that spare dress,” Sarah teased as she opened up the medical cabinet and crouched in front of it. There were several compartments and a deep shelf, and uncertain what exactly would be needed, Sarah started gathering up her best guesses. “I can tailor it to fit you. You’d look pretty in green,” she boasted.

One object that didn’t quite fit in caught her eye, then amused Sarah as she moved the slim canister out of the way, and continued her rummaging.

“Like seeing it on you better,” her partner called gruffly, and Sarah nearly dropped the roll of gauze she had just picked up.

“You’re too injured to be flirty, Din, or did that chemical go to your head?” Sarah called, cheeks improbably pink as she finished emptying the majority of the medical cabinet onto the floor. She felt flustered, and the inappropriate timing of it frustrated her - first he got all happy during the middle of a hair-raising, terrifying space game of _Ion-cannon tag,_ then he’s being sappy with her?

Sarah had _questions_ and on the top of the list was why this was even needling her to begin with. She felt like a bloodhound who’d just caught scent of an interesting trail.

“Helmet,” Din answered simply. Sarah snorted in disbelief and amusement.

“Right, well, I’m just going to bring everything up because this is way too much to figure out,” Sarah declared, then stood to grab a blanket from her bed to use as a makeshift bag. It didn’t take long to transfer everything onto it.

Hefting the modestly bulging sack up, Sarah carefully carried her haul back across the messy floor.

When she was high enough up the ladder to see into the cockpit, she saw that Din Djarin wasn’t where she’d left him; her partner paced the small confines of the tiny room, and stopped only once Sarah had carefully climbed up and entered, mindful of the child still strapped to her chest.

It was strange to see someone known for stillness move restlessly.

“Hands first,” Sarah announced. A soft burble drew both their gazes; Grogu stirred, little peach-fuzzed head turning in his carrier as large ears twitched, then the child fell back into deeper sleep. Sarah gently brushed her hand over his skull, took comfort in the assurance of his well being; he was a warm, precious life beneath her hand, cozy and secure, trusting he’d be protected while he was so vulnerable and exhausted from using the Force.

Sarah was still awed their child had done so well in keeping the both of them safe, yet simultaneously heartbroken such a young life had been forced to an act of violence. It wasn’t right.

It was better than the alternative, though, and she was proud of him.

Din’s visor dipped from looking at Grogu, to the makeshift sack of supplies she carried. Sarah caught wariness both in the man’s aura and in his posture; Din’s bare muscles made once subtle body language almost jarringly obvious to her, though he looked rather silly in just pants and a helmet.

“Let’s see what you brought first,” he decided.

After she’d laid everything out on the floor, Din carefully went down on both knees across from her to look at the collection. There were some small canisters, a few slim first aid kit boxes, and a small transparent case of spooky looking needles with a mysterious clear liquid in them. Sarah didn’t know what the substance was only because she couldn’t read the language its label was written in.

In the middle of sitting down herself, Sarah’s gaze caught on something, did a double-take, then stared before she caught herself and looked back to the medical equipment as she settled into place.

For some reason, out of everything she could notice about Din Djarin right now, the thing that struck Sarah soundly on the head was the fact he had no boots or socks on.

She had never seen his bare feet before, and it filled in another precious splash of warm, golden skin to her puzzle-piece picture of what he looked like beneath the armor.

  
  


~*~

  
  


“Pretty much... everything we had except what was obviously not going to help, like the can of shaving cream. Really don’t think you’re in need of a shave right now,” Sarah joked, and Din realized her reaction was both noticeably delayed and distracted. “Din?” she added a moment later, and he looked up from the array of supplies on the floor to meet her icy gaze.

When she didn’t continue, Din’s brows furrowed.

“...What?” he prompted curiously.

“This is… We have what we need to take care of you, right?” Sarah asked, the first obvious sign of worry entering her voice.

“We do,” he confirmed with a sigh.

He was vehemently glad, in a way he wasn’t used to feeling, to have Sarah’s company. He wouldn’t have been able to fly the ship out, wouldn’t have had the time to escape _and_ protect Grogu, _and_ take care of himself while acid was eating away at his flesh - both the metaphorical and literal variants. He didn’t like to think of where he and the kid might be if they’d been alone.

Din Djarin was no stranger to injuries, though this was definitely one of the more serious wounds he had faced in his lifetime.

He eyed the syringes with trepidation anyways.

Din hated shots just slightly more than he hated seafood.

Fingers touched the outside of his forearm. He jerked at the contact, then met Sarah’s gaze again.

“I need you to tell me what to do,” she said patiently. “I’ve never treated something like this, Din.”

Breathing sharply in through his nose, his only concession to acting on frustration and trepidation, Din Djarin shoved those feelings aside as he got down to business.

He really wanted his hands in working condition again. The sooner, the better.

“This first,” he explained, and gestured to the case of shots without uncurling any of his fingers. “Plunger goes all the way down to the second line; injected in the shoulder.”

It was almost unfair how quickly she had the case in her hands and a syringe at the ready.

“What’s this do?” his partner asked.

“Heal; it’s a Bacta shot. Antibiotics are separate,” he added as he pointed, wrist held carefully straight, at a small black box. It had tiny white lettering on the cover, beneath the galactic-standardized medical symbol, which marked it as a specialty first-aid kit.

“Isn’t Bacta... Blue?” Sarah wondered, both audibly and visibly surprised as she worked open a small packet of sanitation wipes one-handed.

“The regulated stuff is,” he confirmed, then frowned as he considered something. “Don’t ever buy off-brand without me. I know who produces this, and I’ve used his supply for years,” Din explained. “Black market supply isn’t always reliable.”

“You want me to inject you with _black market_ Bacta?” Sarah asked incredulously. “Can’t this stuff kill you?”

“If it’s not what it’s supposed to be, yeah,” he confirmed. “You’ll still feel better afterwards.”

Sarah opened her mouth, shut it, then sighed.

With a silent nod of her head, she granted both her obedience and her trust, and Din Djarin felt relief. He really wasn’t up for extended conversation after everything that had happened; he wanted to tend his injuries, take care of the mess below, and keep himself busy so he couldn’t fall asleep. Not until they were safe, or at least as safe as they could be while being hunted.

His gaze darted to Grogu as Sarah shuffled over to put herself next to him, and Din thought the kid had the right idea.

A nap had never sounded so compelling.

Less-so when Sarah lined the needle up on his arm, then faltered.

“Do I just… stick it in?” she asked tentatively, grimacing. “I’ve never given anyone a shot like this.”

“Yes; inch and a half deep. How are you still alive?” he asked, only half-joking. This was basic medical care, and he was surprised Sarah didn’t know it, especially for someone who lived in the outer-rim.

The thought struck Din soundly that he didn’t actually know where Sarah had lived her life before they’d met; he knew vague details, had an impression of her most recent experiences, yet he really didn’t know all that much about her.

He’d meant it when he said it mattered more to him who she was now and what she would do in the years to come.

It didn’t mean he wasn’t… curious. Maybe it was the fact Sarah had unwittingly distracted him with thoughts of a possible future together, but now he found himself wondering how things may have been different if they’d met sooner; if he had been more present in her past than their handful of months together. He wanted to know more about her, about her experiences, what she’d lived through, and the realization of that made him feel just slightly unbalanced.

Outside of absolute necessity, Din Djarin wasn’t used to pursuing curiosity.

Sarah had offered to sate it from the very start - all he had to do was ask, and she’d let him get to know her, yet it wasn’t until _now_ that the weight of that really settled on Din’s shoulders.

It’d been something Sarah had offered him because it meant something to her to do so - the difference was that now, it meant something to him, too. Something more than simply an assurance of her loyalty and faith, it was an offer of connection, a way to bridge the gap between them.

Some part of him had subconsciously absorbed that, had even pursued it in some ways, yet Din was somewhat dumbstruck to find himself only now recognizing how precious her initiative was.

“You are driving me absolutely _insane_ right now, and I wish you to know that,” Sarah said abruptly, expressive voice an octave higher in pitch, and Din realized the silence had stretched between them unchecked; she hadn’t yet given him the shot. “What is going on in that head of yours?” Sarah asked, sounding exasperated, and Din turned his visor to face her fully. Her head was less than a foot away from his, slim hands still braced on his arm with the thin, silver needle held at the ready.

He opened his mouth to answer, then sucked in a short breath as the needle slid into his arm. Sarah carefully and steadily depressed the plunger to the line he’d indicated. Coldness flooded the muscle of his bicep, then began to quickly tingle all through his limb and across his body like a soothing flood.

The actual injection part hurt more than it should, even though it’d lasted only a split second, and Din sighed deeply in response to the contrasting sensations as she pulled the needle out.

“Ow,” he said a few moments later, mostly to break the silence. It had the desired effect; Sarah laughed, light and involuntary, and Din felt a little better at seeing the tension ease out of her shoulders.

“My big, tough Mandalorian doesn’t say a peep over being half-dissolved in acid, but you’re complaining about a tiny shot?” Sarah asked, amused.

He huffed lightly through his nose, and realized she could probably see his chest shake in subtle, silent laughter that would normally be hidden by all his layers.

 _“--Kriff,_ that stuff is already working?” Sarah blurted suddenly, and Din found her leaning over his lap as she inspected the welts on his torso and arms. The tiniest pinpricks of angry red were already lightening in color as the irritated skin was soothed beneath, though actual re-growth of the damaged tissue wouldn’t be completed for several hours.

“Antibiotics,” Din prompted quietly, eager to have this over with. He couldn’t resist adding, “And maybe this time my nurse will be gentler with the needle.”

“Sorry,” she said with a sympathetic grimace, before it melted into a smile as she continued, “I’m usually _great_ with a needle. For sewing. Cloth or flesh,” Sarah clarified as she picked up the black box and carefully cracked it open. Din watched with a distant wheedling sensation of trepidation he stoutly ignored. “Which is worse, shots or stitches?” she wondered.

Din had, impressively, blessedly, never had stitches. He made do with an electric cauterizer, even if that by all rights hurt far more than small pinpricks probably would.

He didn’t care. He _really_ didn’t want to ever have his flesh held together by string.

“Either,” he answered finally. Abruptly, Sarah’s eyes were on him, flicked up from examining the label of a tiny, opaque black syringe device. This one, at least, had no plunger. A quick poke, an automatic injection, and it’d be over.

But until it _was_ , he had to wait anxiously for it to even happen.

“Din Djarin,” Sarah murmured gently.

His back straightened as he looked at her; though she’d already had his attention, now she had it entirely as he wondered at the soft tone in her voice, the unfamiliar emotion in her eyes.

Or, rather, he knew _what_ it was - Din was just thoroughly still not used to being able to see it, to being on the receiving end even after Sarah had freely given this to him before.

Genuine concern, gentle reassurance. Soft things his hard life had forsaken. Intimate things that dark visors never let past their shadowed guards.

She spoke his name as he often spoke hers; it was reassurance and conversational prompt all in one, and the thought that Sarah was mirroring his action left something warm and fuzzy in Din’s chest. It was at odds with the discomfort he had been trapped in since entering the cockpit barely dressed and hurting.

She didn’t ask him what was wrong; she didn’t tell him what to do, how to act, and she didn’t pretend to ignore it, ignore him. He was free to reply to her however he wanted to, needed to. Or to remain silent, if he wished.

Something inside Din twisted, and drew honesty into his lungs as he found the voice to speak.

“When I was… A kid,” he started - then halted, the words coming out stiff and hasty, almost blurted out. Din closed his eyes, felt the soothing relief from the Bacta as it steadily dulled the pain in his body. He felt the calming touch of Sarah’s fingertips, still tracing gentle patterns on the unmarked areas of his arms. “I got real sick. Had to get… a lot of shots. Couldn’t sit right for a week. Never liked them,” Din admitted.

“I’m not a big fan of them either,” Sarah agreed.

Tension left his muscles when her fingers brushed up his arm, the sensation vanishing briefly as they trailed over the numbed scar-tissue of ragged claw marks over his shoulder. Then the edge of her first knuckles pressed gently against the underside of his jaw beneath the Beskar helmet. Her hand was just barely small enough to fit between the plush padding that sealed the helmet to his jawline in an air-tight lock, and her thumb stroked a gentle line over the exposed skin of his throat. Din sighed, and didn’t fight it as he leaned into the simple, pleasant contact.

Something cool and rubbery touched his bicep in place of her other fingers, then a short, sharp prick before he even had time to register what Sarah was doing as his eyes snapped open.

It was already over.

Her smile wasn’t exactly apologetic; it lingered somewhere between ‘amused’ and ‘sympathetic.’

“Bandage time,” Sarah declared as she set aside the used injection device, and Din huffed quietly, feeling both stymied by and appreciative of her approach. Mostly, he was just glad it was over with.

Comfortable silence fell between them as she gingerly wrapped the worst of his wounds, and he resisted the urge to flex sore hands. They felt much better than before, but Din knew the moment the skin stretched or bent more than a twitch, he’d be back in a world of fresh pain until the healing had progressed further along.

“So…” Sarah peeked up at him as she shuffled closer, mindful of Grogu’s sleeping weight still strapped to her chest. Din looked up from watching her hands work. “With all the whole nearly-being-dissolved, murdered, maimed, and a terrifying space chase just to wrap things up,” she listed casually, “which part, _exactly,_ is the one that made you all giddy, and... Why?”

Din Djarin froze stiff, heart lodged in his throat. He hadn’t expected her to revisit the topic.

~*~

“Uh.”

Sarah raised her eyebrows at Din’s eloquent reply, and carefully tied off the gauzy bandaging around his upper arm, his left hand now neatly wrapped. Her partner’s broad chest jerked up and down in a short, stuttering breath she didn’t hear, and wasn’t certain she’d have noticed if he’d been fully clothed.

Her curiosity redoubled, and Sarah unconsciously narrowed her eyes as she scrutinized her partner.

“It, uh…” Din trailed off, then cleared his throat, and Sarah felt both amusement and consternation as his visor abruptly jerked away from meeting her gaze, and he busied himself looking at her handiwork. “Just... Something you said,” he hedged.

Sarah tied off the last bandage, then reached up to put her hands on either side of his helmet, and turned her ridiculous warrior’s head to look back at her as she smiled playfully at him. It… It was a relief to be enjoying something pleasant after such a frightening experience, and this energized calm between them had a soothing effect for her frayed nerves that Sarah liked.

It assured her, more than anything, that all three of them were really ok, that they were alive, safe, and together.

“Tell me what you liked to hear?” she requested quietly. “I’ll say it again if it gets _that_ response out of you,” she half-teased, even as she wracked her brain. Was it something about the Razor Crest? Most of what she remembered was the harrowing, electrifying adrenaline rush and the feel of Din’s ship as it responded to her gestures like an extension of her body. She remembered every blaster shot, every trajectory of the ionic blasts - yet she had only impressions of most conversation and emotional moments.

She wasn’t expecting Din to make a half-choked, strangled noise that made his chest hiccup and his Adam’s apple bob dramatically up-and-down once, twice, then he groaned softly.

 _“Osik,”_ her partner swore, and Sarah stared at him, eyes wide.

“What did I _say?”_ she wondered, utterly mystified.

Din’s arms lifted to either side of her, and Sarah obligingly leaned forward so he could awkwardly hug her without using his hands to actually pull her close. The firm muscles formed a living cage around her, and Sarah carefully leaned a shoulder into Din’s chest, Grogu cradled between them.

 _“Woman,”_ he growled in both exasperation and reverent plea, and Sarah felt the floor drop out from under her even though she was very definitely still on the Razor Crest, still sitting on the cool metal. Still wrapped in Din’s arms, warm and strong and secure even beneath the bandaging.

The air around them prickled Sarah’s skin in captivating ways, as Din’s aura bloomed with a pleasing warmth, a dazzling brightness, cut with something soft and riveting.

Sarah thought she was going to burst from suspense as his dramatic reaction failed to reveal anything about _why_ he was behaving the way he was; when he spoke again, Sarah held her breath, as if there was a real risk that even disturbing the air might scare him off of revealing himself to her.

 _“Mhi me’dinuir an,”_ Din rumbled through the filter of his helmet. There was a natural softness to the words as he spoke them, like he couldn’t help but involuntarily gentle his voice when speaking the _Mando’a_ phrase.

He almost sounded… shy.

Sarah blinked as butterflies stirred in her chest, then furrowed her brows as she considered what he’d said, vaguely surprised she actually understood him. Well… she understood his _words,_ if not the context to understand their meaning; they shared everything…?

“Part of the… Part of vows,” Din unhelpfully explained in an uncharacteristic mumble, his grip on her shifting. Before Sarah could draw breath to beg for a better explanation, he granted clarity; “You proposing to me?” Din joked, a hitch in his voice giving away that he asked in jest, yet it still managed to bring Sarah’s world to a screeching halt. The way he asked it was almost like it’d been involuntary, like he hadn’t really thought before blurting it out.

Even more than his words, though, was his tone; beneath the nervous lilt of humor, beneath the hasty, blurted jest - there was a tentative hopefulness to the way he spoke, like he’d tried to hide how much he liked the idea, and couldn’t.

Sarah’s mind went utterly blank. Her strongest asset, her most useful trait, and Din rendered it into a mentally blank slate of shut-down as she tried to process the situation.

He liked the thought of...

“U-uh. I, uh.”

It took her a moment to remember that he was just messing with her. Even if some tiny part of him... wasn’t.

A soft huff at first, a silent shake of Din’s chest, until suddenly mirthful chuckles shook his body as the soft noise shimmered around her. Sarah’s cheeks were warm.

“Go take care of the kid,” Din directed suddenly, voice rough and light, then gave Sarah a light squeeze before he released her entirely.

 _“Buir?”_ Grogu mumbled quietly. Sarah jolted and looked down at the same time Din did, and nearly knocked heads with him.

“Woah-- _Wait,_ hold on; this is _so_ unfair,” Sarah protested - very belatedly - as Grogu peered up at them with sleepy eyes and half-perked ears. She looked back at Din, torn between devoting her attention to their newly awoken child, and the rather quite heart-stopping moment she’d just been entangled in with Din. “You - You can’t just _say_ that, then shoo me off,” she asserted, aware her face was probably a red brilliant enough to rival Din’s burnt hands as she finally settled with her eyes on Grogu. How long had the child been awake for?

“Looked like you needed an out,” Din pointed out, amusement in his gruff answer. “Hey, kid. Grogu,” Din amended quietly, then gently brushed the back of his bandaged wrist on the child’s head. “You good?” he questioned the child directly.

 _“Elek,”_ Grogu affirmed in his clipped, almost chirruping little voice, his large eyes slowly blinking wider open as he twisted in the carrier to better see his dad. Din held almost utterly still but for the rise and fall of his breathing, light reflecting off the Beskar helmet. The rippling, star-streaked light of hyperspace was pretty on the silver metal.

Sarah didn’t quite register that she was staring at Din again until she realized his helmet had now lifted to look up at her twice in an almost lazy double-take, and then the thin bar of his visor was staring back at her.

“Hey,” he said softly. “I was… I was kidding,” he clarified awkwardly. Sarah’s already flushed cheeks burned brighter.

Now _two_ pairs of eyes looked at her, and she shifted her weight, then dropped her gaze to carefully fish Grogu out of his carrier. He clung to her with sleepy hands, and she tucked him up under her chin, cradled against her chest. The child practically flopped against her chest, then made a happy mumbling noise of content.

Sarah finally peeked back up and met Din’s unwavering, still visor, a shy smile on her lips.

“I don’t think I can propose until I have a helmet?” she said, tone of voice caught between tentative curiosity and humor, her heart hammering. She’d meant it to come out teasing and confident, but her voice had faltered the moment it left her lips.

A thought struck her, instantaneous even though it came to her as a fully fledged, fleshed out line of thinking; her voice failed because this wasn’t just flirting, or playful banter. She _wasn’t_ joking.

This was... Serious.

Sarah felt bold, and reckless. High off the adrenaline of their recent experience, leveled by relief that both her partner and her adoptive son were _safe._ It made her feel daring, like every precious moment mattered. Like the normal considerations and risks that constrained her actions didn’t quite matter as much anymore.

She had almost lost him today. She had almost _lost_ him; if the acid had gotten under Din’s jaw, on his throat, if the bounty hunter had landed a lucky shot, or the bald man and his accomplice had succeeded in subduing them, if Sarah had failed to execute their escape into Hyperspace… She could have lost either one of them; Din, Grogu - or both. She could have died herself, or been captured, and left them alone.

Sarah was pretty sure Din opened his mouth to answer her; his throat bobbed the slightest bit, and the muscles of his neck shifted like his jaw dropped open--

Grogu burbled at them, loud and cute and Sarah just wanted to die on the spot as Din’s visor immediately dropped back down to the child, like an invisible string had jerked his head.

The child _hadn’t_ used the force to gain Din’s attention, though the thought still lurked with Sarah’s imagination as she stared down at her deceptively innocent-looking foundling.

 _“Riduurah?”_ Grogu repeated excitedly as he looked back and forth between them, and Sarah abruptly realized the child had actually said a word.

Din sucked in a strangled breath, then reached over as if he wanted to pick the child up, then quickly remembered why he shouldn’t.

“What’s he say--...?” Sarah trailed off as she looked down. Grogu stared soulfully up at her, remained silent with pricked ears, before he turned his head to face his surrogate father.

Din cleared his throat, and awkwardly dropped his hands back to his lap as Sarah turned her attention back to him completely.

“...He’s saying - Things that… Would... “

Sarah waited, and watched him struggle to walk himself through a clever conversational out. He’d get there eventually - _maybe_ , she amended, as the silence stretched.

Din cleared his throat again, and straightened. Sarah wasn’t entirely certain how she managed to keep a straight face.

Grogu remained politely silent, almost expectant in the way he watched his father translate for him. Green ears pricked as high as their weight would allow.

“...He uh, he says stuff that you’ll… You’ll learn about later,” Din finished hastily. “Nap time,” Din added, his rich voice abruptly changing tone as he looked back at the child.

Grogu _raspberried_ at him, and Din made a dismissive grumbling noise.

Sarah took a deep breath.

She let it out as laughter.

“You’re still _adorable,_ Din,” Sarah opined fondly, shaking her head. “Maybe instead of mind trick lessons, I’ll start teaching you how to smooth talk your way out of a corner. You… You need to work on your skills in misdirection.”

“I don’t usually need them,” he admitted, and the statement made something in Sarah’s stomach twist.

Grogu growled quietly, and mutter-burbled his earlier word.

Sarah tried a new tact.

~*~

Three hours.

That was how long it took to clean the hull up of smeared, half-dried acidic goo and the remains of Din’s _Kute_ . Even his bandolier was shot - the fact his empty holster remained almost mockingly free of damage just reminded him again that he had _lost_ his blaster.

Well. Not lost; left behind. Din knew exactly where he’d left it, and it was probably long gone by now; there was a very slim chance that Cara or Greef might both find and recognize it, maybe keep it tucked away until their paths crossed again.

His hip felt bare and exposed and uncomfortably empty, and it reminded him uncomfortably of his time in the void during his visionary experience. Din tried not to hinge his hopes on the small possibility he’d reclaim his preferred weapon, tried not to think about what legitimately felt like losing a crucial part of himself. 

Sarah made that a little easier.

For three hours, she’d continuously tried to guess the word a sleepy Grogu couldn’t quite manage to say, and had wrangled a promise from Din that he would confirm if she got it right.

For three hours, he’d kept her company while she did most of the work cleaning up the Razor Crest, and he stewed over his inconvenient injuries.

Din offered advice and directive, since he couldn’t help directly, and kept Grogu occupied with cuddles. The child sat slumped in Din’s lap, occasionally stirring to get more comfortable as he fisted his fingers in the borrowed shirt Din wore. On Sarah, it’d been a baggy sack. Din’s broad shoulders were at risk of stretching the seams if he curled his back too far or reached out, so he was mindful of his movements.

“It _is_ a word in _Mando’a,_ right?” Sarah questioned as she scrubbed the leather of his chewed-up bandolier with a soapy, chemical lather. She sat cross-legged on the floor a comfortable distance away, a pile of towels and a series of three shallow tubs of liquid in front of her, each one a different color.

“It is,” Din confirmed readily, and eyed a black bulge out of one pool of murky water that marked the remnants of the padded vest his curias mounted to. Sarah didn’t immediately guess again, and after a few minutes, Din decided to dispel the silence. “Where did you… Grow up?” he asked hesitantly, and immediately disliked the awkward way it sounded, the tactless phrasing.

It felt too much like how he hunted down information on bounties; impersonal and direct.

He wasn’t entirely certain how Sarah didn’t seem to notice; there was no playful smirk to gloat over his social fumble. Instead, she looked thoughtful.

Her hands didn’t halt their task, though they did slow down as she worked the lather into the worn leather with bare fingers. The acid had long since been neutralized.

“I grew up traveling,” Sarah started, her gaze unfocused, yet not in the way that Din knew meant something was wrong. He liked that she let him see her think. “I guess you could say more accurately I grew up in the markets - we’d rotate through the sectors with trading seasons and fads, so we usually spent a few months at each planet we visited. We had family in the inner-rim we’d visit now and then when I was a kid. There’s some places I had I spent maybe only a handful of months on, yet they felt like home while I was there.”

As he listened, Din rethought his discomfort over this feeling like a business-like interrogation. Sarah’s answer was too freely given to have any similarity, and Din felt the muscles of his back relax as he sighed quietly.

When she trailed off and didn’t pick back up again, he tried to think of something else to ask her, to learn more about her, to keep listening to the pleasing cadence of her voice, a pleasant addition to the quiet hum of hyperspace travel.

“Is there anywhere you want to go, and... haven’t?” he prompted, more confident in delivery than his opening question had been.

Sarah glanced at him almost shyly, a smile on her lips, a pleased light in her bright eyes before she quickly turned her eyes back to her work.

“There’s… a few places I’d love to go to someday,” she admitted, wistful. It wasn’t an expression he was used to seeing on her, though he’d heard it before in her voice.

Din’s fingers flexed.

He owned a ship. They had time. Barring caution for their safety, the entire galaxy was open before them.

“Where?” he prompted quietly, when she didn’t immediately continue.

Sarah startled, and Din watched as his partner did a quick double-take at him. Her hands stilled on the leather bandolier.

She opened her mouth with furrowed brows, then at the last second, seemed to change what she had intended to say as her expression melted back into calm composure with bright, interested eyes as she looked at him. Her hands resumed working.

“It’s cliche, but I’ve never been to Naboo, and everyone always talks about how lovely it is there when you get away from the immediate city,” Sarah started softly. “There’s… Also a place in the uncharted sector I’d love to see someday. I was told how to find the way.”

Din tried not to let the tightening in his chest distract him from listening; her tone of voice didn’t fool him one bit. Din had the feeling she’d listed Naboo as a safe out for him.

Had she already guessed his intentions? Naboo was located in the Mid-Rim of the galaxy, and while far more traveled and populated than Din was comfortable with, it was… possible.

But to want to venture into the uncharted sectors of the galaxy she spoke of with such yearning?

Din Djarin was as intrigued by Sarah’s dangerous wish as he was concerned by it.

Before he could ask her about it, a notification sounded from the cockpit. It was the first warning for exiting hyperspace in fifteen minutes; Din had walked Sarah through setting a few alarm notices so she’d have time to wrap up projects.

“How are your hands?” Sarah asked as she dunked his bandolier into a bucket of rinse water, then began gathering up the mess of loose cleaning supplies into a bucket.

Din opened his mouth to answer her, then hesitated when he realized he wasn’t sure how to describe it; his hands weren’t fully healed, they still hurt with a deep, aching soreness, yet he was confident he could use them if he absolutely had to.

“...Better,” he settled on finally, and watched as Sarah began pulling the remaining gear through the final rinse stages, then laid out his vest and belts on a large, ratty towel. Over each bin of liquid she pulled a heavy cover that locked into place.

Sarah turned to face him, finally finished securing her cleaning station for the jolt that would occur when they came down from traveling faster than the speed of light.

Din swallowed thickly as she shuffled across the ground on her knees, and then her arms were folded over his thighs as she looked up at him with a lazy smile.

He remembered how to breathe when she reached out a hand and gently stroked the top of Grogu’s head, and Din felt his muscles relax. It was strange, existing in this quiet hush with other living beings - he had spent so many years traveling alone, with frequent stretches of hours, sometimes days, of quiet solitude in his chosen isolation.

He rather liked the difference it made in having Sarah and Grogu here to share it with him; Grogu, a precious, trusting presence tucked up against his stomach and sleeping soundly; and Sarah, reliable, trustworthy, and so very gentle behind her fierce exterior.

He glanced at the kid once to confirm the child really was asleep, then lifted a hand and brushed bandaged knuckles across Sarah’s cheek. Her expression softened as she lifted her eyes to meet his through the thin visor, and Din felt his world narrow.

Another alarm sounded. They had eight minutes left on the timer.

Din’s gaze dropped to Sarah’s lips, and he thought hard.

They weren’t in immediate danger, though it was possible they would be if anyone was waiting for them at the end of the hyperspace lane. Grogu was asleep, and Din was fairly confident the kid would both remain that way for some time yet… and probably wouldn’t object to a careful hand over his eyes out of caution.

Mind made up, Din quietly voiced his request. The timing wasn’t ideal, and it couldn’t be for long - but he didn’t care. He was willing to take advantage of the peaceful moment while they had it, because there was no guarantee of another.

Sarah looked startled at first, then quickly smiled at him as she acquiesced, and her lashes fluttered shut.

~*~

“...Open your eyes,” Din said softly, his voice barely loud enough to be caught on the audio processor. Sarah obeyed immediately, if only because she was so surprised by his request.

“But--”

She trailed off as she watched his bandaged hand slowly reach up to hook a thumb under the edge of his helmet, his other gently held over the top of Grogu’s head, and Sarah couldn’t look away; she was frozen in place, breath held, heart skipping.

“You’ve… You’ve already seen this half,” he reasoned softly, but there was a sudden spike of anxiety in the air around him that matched the tension in his shoulders. He wanted this - yet Sarah recognized immediately that Din was struggling against if he should actually act on the desire.

Without further thought, her hand darted out to grab his wrist, and her other palm settled gently on the top of his shoulder, the thin fabric of her old tunic drawn tight over his broad frame. She swallowed thickly.

“I… I want to look,” Sarah admitted quietly. “But is this really ok? I can wait, Din,” she urged, her grip on him tightening slightly.

He was quiet for too long, too still despite the way his chest hitched. Grogu grumbled quietly as he wiggled into a more comfortable position, little head scrunched down into the folds of his voluminous robe, hidden beneath his dad’s broad palm.

Sarah couldn’t believe Din was willing to even _consider_ lifting part of his helmet in front of her, let alone with their child nestled in his lap, another pair of eyes at risk of infringing on his Oath. She wasn’t convinced her lover and friend was thinking straight, especially after recent events, and she didn’t want to encourage him to make an impulsive choice of magnitude that he might regret later.

On the other hand, the thought of seeing the lips she’d kissed in the dark and getting a better look at the scruffy jawline she’d glimpsed peeks of before both in person and in his memories… It was enough to make her feel lightheaded and giddy.

As the temptation clawed inside her, Sarah thought she understood why he’d offered to begin with. She was certain the desire went both ways.

“I don’t know,” Din admitted quietly as he settled a warm, gauze-wrapped palm on her cheek. “I just…” He breathed in deeply, then let it out in a slow exhale.

Another beep sounded. They had four minutes of security in hyperspace left.

“Kiss me blind now, and we’ll… We’ll revisit this later,” Sarah suggested softly, leaning forward. She peeked down just to confirm Grogu was still unable to see if he woke up, then closed her eyes.

A soft hiss as Din’s respirator automatically cut off as the padding around the base of his helmet was no doubt lifted clear of his jaw, and Sarah let him guide her head forward to his lips. Soft and inviting, he managed to steal her breath away in one slow, almost _polite_ crush of his mouth against hers. The edge of his helmet, brought barely halfway up his face, brushed against her nose as she angled her head for a better approach.

The tender exchange was over far too soon. She leaned back slightly as Din’s lips drew away from hers with a soft sigh, and then cool Beskar bumped her nose again as he jerked his helmet back down. Sarah opened her eyes and came face-to-visor with the thin, impenetrable viewport.

When had the cool silver and black of Beskar become such a warm, lively metal to her?

Sarah distantly figured she probably had a dreamy smile on her face as she looked at Din, then dropped her gaze and gently collected Grogu. Their child stirred with a sleepy grumble as he woke up at being moved, then fell right back asleep as Sarah tucked him up under her chin.

“Time to strap in,” Sarah murmured, then led the way to the cockpit.

~*~

“Shut up,” Boba Fett ordered Ruselm as he brought himself down the ladder, muscles stiff and sore and what felt like every inch of his back burning in a disturbingly familiar sensation. The majority of his scars had been caused by the stomach acid of a Sarlac, and Boba felt two steps away from revisiting horrible memories as he struggled to maintain his composure.

His quarry was gone, he had no leads, Fennec was injured, he was injured, and their prisoner was too noisy.

At least the boy had the sense to obey Boba’s command, and he barely spared the red-faced, slouched medic a glance as he immediately came to a stop in front of Fennec Shand.

She had removed her harness straps, yet remained sitting. Aside from the gray dust that coated the front of her largely black outfit, she looked… Fine.

Her dark hair, drawn back into a series of intricate braids close to her scalp that gathered into one practical, singular tumble, didn’t even look disheveled.

She didn’t say anything, just looked up at him with an unreadable expression he found familiar and reassuring.

“You’re alright?” he asked gruffly.

“Yeah, just fine,” Ruselm muttered sourly. Fennec’s gaze slid the boy’s way with a quirk of one slender brow, a small twitch of her lips. Ruselm quailed and shrank back from her.

Boba gave a small puff of amusement through his nose in a short, sharp exhale.

“I’m fine,” Fennec confirmed finally, as she turned to meet Boba’s gaze again.

“Good,” he answered, then turned and walked for the fresher to take a shower.

~*~

Fennec watched Boba walk away from her, and frowned as she eyed pin-pricks of pale skin visible through multitudes of holes in the back of his layered black robes. Tiny wisps of smoke trailed from a few of the largest ones, visible only because of the way the light caused it to stand out against the dark fabric.

Fennec had a guess of the cause, and it made her stomach turn over in unease.

“You were hit with acid?” she prompted. Boba came to a stop in the main hall, a hand on the door to the shower as his head turned to look at her.

“Yes.”

Fennec stood and brushed dust off her clothes as Boba looked away, then yanked open the door.

“Touch anything, and I’ll break your fingers,” Fennec warned Ruselm as she walked down the hall and stepped through the angled doorway that framed the ramp up to their main living quarters. It didn’t take long for her to fetch the medical box from underneath the shared bunk-bed.

Fennec turned around and walked briskly down the ramp. She found Ruselm sitting exactly where she’d left him, still red-faced with anger and fear as he sat slumped in his chair, arms folded over his chest, practically pouting.

Satisfied, she put a hand on the fresher-door’s grove-handle, then opened it and slipped inside in the same fluid motion.

Boba’s reaction in the cramped space was instantaneous; he spun around with an expression of shock and alarm that his scarred face turned into something savage and dangerous. His arms were tangled up in his shirt, caught half-way between undressing with the black fabric bunched up to his armpits, matching pants preserving his modesty. The outermost robe lay already discarded on the floor in a crumpled heap.

“Get out,” he growled as he yanked the fabric back down over his chest, covering pale skin marred with scars much like his bald head was.

“Turn around,” Fennec said without looking at him, as she set the box down on the narrow shelf to her left, then unlatched it. “Before you melt into a sad, pathetic puddle. Don’t leave me alone with the Imp.”

“I’m the one who gives orders,” Boba retorted, and reached over to put a hand on the lid of the medical kit. His firm grip held it shut, broad palm startlingly bright against the dark case without gloves on. The position crowded Fennec near the corner by the door - his body blocked the better part of the room off from her, torso angled as if he wanted to prevent her from stepping further into it.

Fennec went still, then turned in the small space afforded to her to look up at her grumpy boss.

Boba stared her down with hard authority, lips pressed into a stubborn line, face several inches away despite the proximity making him feel much, much closer.

Fennec raised a single brow at him, and waited. He might have her cornered in a literal sense, but she knew him well enough to know the man was more bark than he was bite - when he was faced against reasoning he knew made better sense.

Boba’s jaw flexed once, twice, then he pulled his lips back in a lopsided, silent snarl of displeasure.

“Get. _Out,”_ he repeated, then put a hand on Fennec’s shoulder as if to turn her around. Her lips quirked into a small smirk as she pivoted to face him fully instead, twisting under his grip.

Fennec had a good guess how to get around his stubborn streak.

Boba went completely still when she boldly reached out and curled her fingers in the fabric of his long shirt, just over his hips, and tugged it up a few inches as she held his gaze. She kept her knuckles pressed firmly against his sides so there was little way he could mistake the intentional gesture - or tune it out.

Boba Fett’s nostrils flared and his eyes darkened as he maintained his glowering stare, but he didn’t tell her to stop.

“You got eyes on the back of your head?” Fennec pressed, and inched the fabric a little higher. A thin strip of pale skin peeked out between the dark hemlines.

“No,” Boba retorted roughly, then turned around and stepped away from her. Fennec’s hands were ripped away from the fabric with his movement, and she let it happen. Boba quickly snatched at the shirt and yanked it back up, exposing his spine to her as he jerked the thing off in three hasty pulls.

He looked about as she’d expected him to - a solid, muscular body gone soft around the edges, his hairless skin marred by shiny, almost mesmerizing patches of old burns and rippling lines of various scars. A swirl of twisting designs in black ink swirled down Boba’s left shoulder and down the same side of his back. It was clearly done after whatever incident had so scarred his body - the ink was too solid in color to be very old, or perhaps he’d had it redone.

Fennec whistled low in appreciation of the view, and in sympathy at the angry splatter of red burns that primarily covered his upper shoulders and mid back. Boba didn’t look at her, just remained facing away as he folded his arms in front of himself and remained rooted to the spot, posture straight and tall.

“You’re going to have new scars,” she commented as she opened up the med kit and withdrew what she wanted - a slim canister of precious powder.

It would be best to be certain the acid was fully neutralized and no longer eating through the layers of his flesh.

“Won’t even be able to tell,” Boba muttered.

“I’ll remember,” Fennec answered as she twisted open the case, then extracted a small puff-ball from the top cover. The thing was already saturated in a fine, pale pink powder, and she tapped it off carefully before she started dabbing it along Boba’s skin, beginning at the top and working her way down.

“I don’t need you to do this for me,” he asserted, flinching away from the contact.

Fennec snorted once, then dug a knuckle into a splotch of angry red skin right over Boba’s spine.

He jolted and jerked away with a shuffled step forward, then twisted at the waist to glower at her.

“Stop complaining. We don’t need two manchilds on this ship,” Fennec said.

“I’ll leave you at the next port if you keep mouthing off,” he muttered, but turned back around to let her continue. Fennec’s lips twitched in a smirk.

“You’d miss me,” she asserted confidently.

He’d saved her life; she’d chosen to stay with him. He’d let her. Boba demanded little more than her loyalty and her obedience in return for a place of belonging and protection. She still had a bounty on her head, and Fennec knew she was far safer traveling with a retired hunter who had little interest in the profession outside of personal goals.

She also maybe rather liked the company, which is why she was willing to risk disobeying him to make sure his injuries were tended properly.

“I’d waste less resources with less crew,” Boba observed.

“You barely eat enough to justify your gut,” Fennec reasoned. “Ditch the Imp and it’ll be like one person eating through the rations again.”

“What, are you my mother now?” he drawled, biting and sharp, just as she reached the lower curve of his back. Fennec sucked in a breath.

“No.”

She emphasized her assertion by pressing her palms flat to his back with the powder-ball pinched between two fingers; Fennec then slid her hands forward over the side of his hips and settled them there, and watched to see how he’d react.

A shiver ran over Bobas’s entire torso as he jolted a fraction of an inch away from her, then turned to glower with one furious eye over a shoulder.

She gave him a pat on one hip, then released him and turned back to the medical kit to pack away the acid neutralizer.

~*~

Boba Fett wasn’t sure what to think.

He knew Fennec stayed with him only out of a sense of self-preservation, and possibly boredom. With her old employers now dead or imprisoned, she had little prospects to look forward to for a new career; working for him gave her both a modicum of protection, and a purpose to serve.

His partner had always been a welcome presence - surprisingly so. She took initiative, followed orders, stayed quiet; Fennec Shand went out of her way to make herself actively useful. She had a smart head on her shoulders that Boba soundly appreciated, paired with a cutthroat pragmatism at odds with her lovely, feminine looks. He wasn’t blind - he knew she was beautiful, in more ways than one.

It was a bit disarming to feel crowded into this tiny room with her taking up more space than her slender frame had any right to. He couldn’t understand her actions - was she trying to manipulate him, or was this her idea of keeping things equal by playing nurse? She’d had little decision in the matter of Boba saving her life - Fennec hadn’t been conscious enough to grant or deny consent to the surgery she’d undergone to replace vital organs damaged beyond repair by a blaster-bolt to the gut.

When her hands had slid over the bare skin of his waist, Boba had nearly lost his temper; after years of near solitude and little physical contact outside of fighting or functional necessity, the sudden sensation of soft skin in a gentle touch was shocking. It was like a splash of cold water on a hot day - impossible to ignore.

He wasn’t the man he once was, young and bold and easy on the eyes. The reminder wasn’t pleasant - Fennec’s soft, unblemished skin had no place so close to his disfigurement. Her delicate hands had no place on his wretched body.

“Give the neutralizer a few minutes to do its magic before you rinse off,” Fennec reminded him as she got an oval tin out, breaking into Boba’s thoughts, and set it on the counter to be at the ready. He finally turned around to face her partway, wary. She glanced up to him, and held his gaze. “I’ll put the salve on your back when you’re out of the shower,” Fennec asserted, her authoritative voice daring him to argue the point.

That wasn’t what got to Boba, though.

He couldn’t have stopped the thought if he’d wanted to; an image, brief but damning, flashed in his head of her joining him in the shower, hands on his bare back, fingers trailing down… Boba felt the blood rush to his head - and not the one on his shoulders. Clearing his throat and keeping a straight face, he quickly turned to face the wall again.

“Out,” he ordered shortly, voice rough.

“When are we ditching the Imp?” Fennec asked instead, conversational. Boba closed his eyes. Why was she being so persistent? She was planning on leaving, right? _Right?_

“When I say we do; Get. _Out._ I won’t ask again, _”_ he warned, and tried not to think of what he’d do if she refused to leave again. He really didn’t know. He didn’t want to have to think of something.

A moment later, he heard the soft shuffle of Fennec’s boots on the metal floor, and the rustle of cloth. The door slid aside, and Boba looked over his shoulder just in time to see her slip out and close it behind her.

He released a large breath he hadn’t even been aware he’d been holding onto, and Boba finally relaxed marginally.

With her gone, the fresher’s cramped confines felt like a normal space again, and it removed an unexpected distraction, if not the _evidence_ of it; Boba leaned a shoulder against the wall as he waited for his body’s arousal to settle. It was as good a timer as any to go off of while he waited to be able to rinse off.

As he did, he moodily mused that Fennec’s handsy overstep was going to have lasting consequences, if the tingle that lingered on his skin against all reasoning was anything to go off of. He could still feel the ghost sensation of her touch, warm and soft.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I read every single comment that gets added to this story, even if i don't reply to all of them. Comments are moderated, so not only can I manage trolls, but it makes sure I see every one ;)
> 
> I love hearing what you guys are passionate about in the story, whether it's the funies or a specific character.
> 
> You know, it was utterly coincidental that both our favorite Mandos get to be tended to by their lovely partners after a fight, but I'm amused at the parallels.
> 
> Also P H E U F was it hard to keep Boba and Fennec to Slow Burn progression. There were like eight other ways that shower scene could have gone... * waggles eyebrows *
> 
> This was another chapter I really had to drag myself through. I've got a feeling I'll be there until I manage to get these knuckleheads to the places I want them, but they just keep needing to have X Y Z happen *first* and thwart the author's trump card of the almighty "timeskip."
> 
> Oh well - I can't really complain. This chapter has too many adorable moments and some much needed relationship building!
> 
> I feel a little rusty writing Fennec, but I figure It'll be like Sarah and Din - I'll get better at writing her as we go, and I can come back and spruce things up later as needed .w.
> 
> \---
> 
> Mando'a Translations:
> 
> Kriff - Star Wars swear word (not Mando'a). Basically a stand in for "fuck"
> 
> Osik - "shit" Mando'a curse word
> 
> Kute - the bodysuit outfit beneath Mandalorian armor
> 
> Mhi me’dinuir an - "We share all"
> 
> Riduurah - Grogu's attempt at saying something else! I'll grant a special cameo appearance or write a scene based on a chosen prompt or something, for the first person who correctly identifies what word it is Grogu is trying to say ;)


	25. Nosey Family

There was no one waiting for them at the end of the hyperspace lane, and Sarah heaved a sigh of relief from the pilot’s chair. Against her chest, Grogu slept soundly in his carrier.

“Do you think it’s safe to refuel on Tatooine?” Sarah asked, as she looked from the low fuel display to the bright beige swirls of the planet’s surface. For such a barren wasteland, it was lovely to view from afar, when its empty tracts of monotonous landscape became smaller splashes of color in a much larger perspective. “We have just enough fuel we could jump somewhere else, but I don’t want to get caught in another dogfight.”

“Nowhere is going to be safe,” Din began from behind, “But at least we’ll have a warmer welcome here. Take us to the south-east quarter of sector seven - there’s a town there off-grid, we can lay low for a few nights and refuel.”

“Will we see the Tuskens again?” Sarah wondered, and wasn’t sure if she was excited at the idea or wary. She remembered their brief stay in the desert camp vividly, from the cozy, primitive houses and fur-lined floors, to the bejeweled women and the old, weathered medicine woman who had tended Sarah after Rhett’s nightmare visitation.

She was freshly reminded of their gift of the old, rusty lightsaber, and hoped they weren’t going to expect her to show up as a Jedi or something, since she hadn’t even fixed the thing yet.

_ Yet. _

That thought gave her pause, because Sarah abruptly realized that some small part of her had been assuming the reconstruction to be some sort of rite of passage - like by doing it, she’d be embracing the title. It wasn’t so unlike certain aspects of becoming a Mandalorian - accept the equipment, embrace the practice, and people would recognize you for what you looked to be.

If they even knew what they were looking at, of course.

Though Sarah had more musings on that line of thinking, she didn’t have time to continue the train of thought because Din Djarin was talking -  __ or at least he  _ had _ been, and now he was waiting for an answer, and Sarah was chagrined to realize that she… She had utterly missed what he’d said.

Really, it was rather impressive she was comfortable enough around Din to tune him out so completely while she daydreamed, but unfortunately, it wasn’t the best application of her trust in him. Worse, she hadn’t even meant to. Why would she ever want to tune out that gorgeous voice?

“I, ah - Would you please repeat that, Din?” Sarah requested with a sheepish swallow, then admitted, “I’m sorry, I got distracted.”

Radio silence.

Sarah’s heart accelerated.

She bit her lip, yet didn’t turn to see Din to better gauge his mood as much as she wanted to, as she had to watch what she was doing piloting the Razor Crest towards the atmosphere. Looking anywhere else - then back - while descending closer and closer to the glowing horizon always made her eyes strain and her stomach turn, so she didn’t - not during this phase of flight.

On the plus side, Sarah didn’t sense any trace of obvious agitation from Din’s aura on the edges of her awareness, so she took that as a good sign. He was probably just thinking.

“...We might cross paths,” Din repeated finally, nothing amiss in his tone of voice, then he immediately continued, “Do you know how to land a ship on sand?”

Sarah felt her stomach drop. He asked the question so casually, yet the fact he did at all implied great pressure.

“Is it much different from landing on open soil?” she wondered.

“Yes. The sands of Tatooine are deep.”

Sarah didn’t like the sinking feeling in her gut as she pondered the misfortune of her talent of flight not extending towards any genius in landing skills beyond the basics. She had abysmally little time spent honing that area of piloting.

It was easy to justify practice maneuvers in flight - there was little risk of harm to a ship in open sectors of space, so long as it was rated to handle the severity and style of maneuvers performed. It was far harder to justify the significant risk of totalling a serviceable machine just to practice difficult landing sequences not likely to be ever needed.

“I’ve never landed on deep sand, just dirt or gravel,” Sarah listed with a deep breath. “Tell me how?” she urged, unsure whether she should be feeling more confident or wary, and ended up stuck suspended in the middle of both. The time she’d had piloting the Razor Crest during their brief scuffle wasn’t enough to actually make her feel like the ship was familiar.

Sarah’s grip on the joysticks still had more energy akin to someone holding onto a live snake - careful yet unyielding, and wary of sudden, unexpected action - than to comfortably steering a gunship. Zip-and-zoom was much easier to immerse herself in, when there was no time to think, only knee-jerk reaction to what she felt in the moment, and any jarring, bumpy mistakes were easily overlooked and ignored; this steady, level, disarmingly  _ boring _ flight descent as they began to enter the atmosphere was queerly difficult to manage.

The Razor Crest responded on a dime to every twitch of the joysticks, far more touchy than most vehicles, and it made Sarah hyper-aware of every muscle in her hands and where they were on the controls.

Din’s voice comfortably filled the cockpit with his rich baritone, as he explained the differences between vertical takeoff not only for how she would need to land within the next hour or two, but also for other substrates she might face in the future.

It was as relaxing as it was educational, and Sarah wondered in the back of her mind if Din had ever led any of the Foundlings’ lessons. He had a great voice for lecturing.

“I really don’t think I want to land on an ice sheet,” Sarah commented as she reached out to jostle the deflector shield toggle. An audible click sounded with each jiggle and jerk, yet nothing responded. No whirr of tiny electronics in the walls buzzing to life, no vibrating hum of energy to announce a force field’s activation.

“It won’t come back online until the main drives are restarted,” Din explained as Sarah sighed through her nose. “Might have to fix melted circuits first. We can enter the atmosphere without it - turn on the emergency heat-sink.”

As she did so, he went on to add, “Hoth isn’t so bad. Easiest place to pick up bounties - they’re all eager to leave.”

“You’re  _ really _ not selling me on ice-land,” Sarah said with an involuntary smile at his dry humor.

“Figure you’d rather go somewhere green.”

“I’ll settle for sandy purgatory if the company’s worth it, which in this case, it is,” Sarah enthused. “You’re right, though, I would,” she added, softer in volume.

The silence that followed was comfortable.

The noise that broke it not two minutes later was not; a loud, popping lurch that sent a shuddering hiccup through the entire ship, and the left engine’s display turned red as alarms blarred.

“What’s wrong?” Din asked immediately, so fast his voice actually sounded off before the beeping alarm did. Grogu’s quiet burble was just barely audible over the surrounding noise, and Sarah felt the child squirm momentarily against her chest as he woke up.

Sarah didn’t answer Din or her son right away, busy holding the joysticks steady as they fought to yank left and down, suddenly several pounds heavier in her hands as the Razor Crest wobbled. Her gaze continously flicked between the approaching ground a few miles away yet, and displays on the control panel. At least they weren’t far off from their destination.

“We’re running with forty-three percent power on the port turbine, and it’s dropping,” Sarah relayed into the tense atmosphere, further enhanced by Din’s alarm prickling the edges of her thoughts. “We’ll be able to land,” she assured them both as she felt Grogu’s fingers curl into the fabric of her vest. Sarah was confident of that, at least.

She had to be.

When the sound of buckles snapped behind her, Sarah almost told Din to stay seated, and she bit the tip of her tongue instead as he appeared on her left.

“Drop this to the third notch, flip those three switches there, under the middle row,” Din ordered, and gestured with one bandaged hand to the controls in question as his other reached out. Sarah caught the movement in the corner of her eye as she stretched out for a series of short, slender, almost dainty silver switches.

She didn’t notice an immediate difference in how the ship was flying - Sarah refused to think of it as  _ falling _ \- but there was a shift in the noise around them; the engines sounded better, she thought. Less sputtery, smoother.

Din used the very tip of one curled finger to, Sarah assumed, toggle settings of some kind on one of the touch-screen displays.

He didn’t comment or tell her to do differently as she reached for the pitch stabilizer controls to re-engage it, so Sarah had to assume he either approved of her choice, or he was putting blind trust on her shoulders.

Whichever it was, she found herself glad to have him next to her as the Razor Crest stuttered and shook just before she hastily flipped up the short row of brightly colored switches. The shaking of the ship calmed down some, but it still rumbled and stuttered in a wobbly, bouncy fashion.

As dramatic as it felt to Sarah, it wasn’t as noticeable outside of the pilot’s chair - some of the loose items in the cockpit - shirts, empty harness straps, Din’s cape - jiggled a bit with the motion, but it was the joystick controls that really brought the connection forward as Sarah clenched them in a white-knuckled grip.

Bandaged fingers settled on her back, just between her upper shoulders, and Sarah relaxed muscles she hadn’t realized had been locked up tight.

“You’re doing great; keep us level,” Din instructed, his calm voice a comforting counterpoint to her stress.

It became almost a little  _ too _ easy to not be alarmed at the prospect that if the left engine went entirely, they’d be falling in a half-controlled spin the rest of the way down to ground level. Sarah liked to think they’d still be able to land with one engine. Hopefully, in one piece.

Or at least not so many they couldn’t fix the ‘Crest or themselves back up.

“Am I allowed to claim the bald guy broke it?” Sarah asked, and spared the elevation gauge a glance.

“We’ll find out when we land,” Din answered seriously, and Sarah grinned even though she felt mild alarm in an entirely new flavor; she  _ really _ hoped her sloppy take-off hadn’t damaged anything in the ship’s mechanics. She also had a very strong feeling Din was going to find it if she did, possibly even already knew from his fussing with the console.

Against her chest, Grogu watched both of them with perked ears even though he’d stayed almost curiously silent. She couldn’t tell if the child was excited by their predicament giving him an unexpected, bouncy joy-ride as the beige sands rushed towards them in a deceptively slow-looking approach, or if Grogu was just as alarmed as she was.

She had to assume he recognized the fear in both herself and Din - then thought maybe it was possible that he didn’t, because though she could tell her partner was certainly feeling the stress of the situation, like during the gunfight, it wasn’t over-taking the room.

It wasn’t anything like what had drowned her focus during their trip through his abandoned home.

Sarah decided she was just glad Grogu was alright, and if he could manage to happily entertain himself while she and Din handled  _ not _ crashing the ship, it was really more than a mom could ever think to hope for.

Warmth suffused her chest, and she thought she understood a little better how Din could get all gushy on her in the middle of a shoot-out - she liked thinking of herself as a mom.

She liked  _ being _ a mom.

“You’re smiling,” Din observed. The rich baritone changed pitch slightly as the ship bucked beneath his bare feet, and Sarah’s smile vanished momentarily as they dropped twenty feet of elevation in one short, stuttering hop. “Still smiling,” he added. His hand still pressed warm against her back, just barely felt through the layers of armor padding.

“I’m happy,” Sarah admitted. “You know, if you ignore the whole engine issue and all.”

Din didn’t answer, but she felt his silent amusement shimmer in the air around her, a distant flare of intensity against her senses. His thumb brushed back and forth over the bottom of her neck for a moment.

Grogu burbled up at them, though Sarah didn’t think he’d said actual words this time, and she couldn’t spare him a glance.

“Six hundred feet,” she announced over the feeling of tiny fingers curling by her neck. “Grogu - don’t,” Sarah warned as she felt his clawtips prickle lightly against her skin right by the edge of her healing injury.

_ “Buir ka-dala,” _ Grogu mumbled in protest.

_ “Ka-dala?” _ Sarah repeated. It was familiar, but she couldn’t remember the meaning of the  _ Mando’a _ word.

_ “Kadala _ \- Wounded,” Din supplied. “Think the kid wants to heal your neck.”

Warmth flooded Sarah’s chest despite the hair-raising descent as she spotted a small town amidst the endless sands, a blob of pale white and gray buildings clustered together. ‘Small’ was nearly too big a descriptor.

“It’s… It’s personal,” Sarah tried to explain to Grogu, understandably distracted, and she still didn’t know how to convey her feelings on the matter to begin with.

She had just enough presence of mind to be surprised when Din spoke on her behalf.

“That mark is part of a warrior’s honor, kid,” Din said softly. Though Sarah couldn’t see it, she felt the turn of Grogu’s head as he squirmed around to look up at his dad instead of her. “Your mom got that fighting Moff Gideon. She wants it to scar, it’s a worthy memory; proof of her accomplishment.”

Grogu answered, but Sarah didn’t know if he’d made an expressive noise in response or used words instead.

“Two hundred feet,” Sarah said over the warm, squeezy feeling in her chest, and felt Din’s grip on her back tighten slightly as the ship bucked beneath them again. “You should sit down, Din.”

“I’ll stay,” he answered. “Engage the lower propulsion thrusters, we need to reduce speed.”

“They’re already on,” Sarah answered with a grimace. She saw in the corner of her eye as Din’s head snapped to look her way.

_ “Osik?” _ Grogu beeped.

Though it took Sarah a moment to register what he’d said because of the questioning tone, Din recognized the cuss-word  _ immediately. _

“Hey - Don’t say that,” Din blurted with hasty authority.

_ “Eon’gor?” _ Grogu questioned, sharp and plaintive.

_ “Tion’jor,” _ Sarah corrected on reflex. “Grogu, sweetie, I’m so proud you’re using your words, but it really needs to wait until we’ve landed,” Sarah urged him. They were close enough now she could see individual people as heads turned their way. There was no obvious designated landing space, so Sarah decided it meant she was good to land… wherever it was the Razor Crest was willing to let her, as long as it wasn’t on someone or something. Fortunately, the little single-street town had no lack of open space surrounding it.

“I’ll tell you later,” Din promised the child as Grogu settled with a quiet, curious warble.

The display on the main center screen automatically changed over to the gyroscopic landing aide as they came within range of the ground, and then a high-pitched, fast-paced beep sounded on repeat.

Suddenly there was another hand covering Sarah’s left one on the joystick, right before the entire ship bucked and shuddered so hard it clacked her teeth apart and together again before she could clench her jaw. She was glad for Din’s support, because her hands were nearly ripped off the controls from the force of the jerk they gave against her strained arms. Sarah didn’t object to Din crowding her in the pilot’s seat as he wrapped his free arm around her to keep himself from being thrown aside, even with the edge of his Beskar helmet digging into her ear and cheek hard enough to bruise.

The view outside the window pitched and tilted, and the harness-straps progressively dug into Sarah’s chest to either side of Grogu as not only her own weight, but that of Din’s pulled against the force of gravity.

They were spinning in a circle, the town and endless sands alternating in a disorentating, repeating flash in front of her eyes.

“Not again,” Sarah growled as she hauled on the joysticks with Din to keep them as steady as possible.

_ “Again?”  _ Din demanded, though Sarah was pretty sure his sharp tone of voice was more from the strain he was under physically.

_ “Tion’jor ni ne’johaa, al buir johaiir?” _ Grogu complained.

Sarah was aggrieved that she couldn’t properly gush over the momentous occasion of the child engaging in verbal conversation, and even more-so that she only understood about half of what Grogu had said.

Apparently, they’d hit the Talking Phase of the toddler timeline.

Sarah wondered if every momentous occasion in her life from here-on-out was going to be in the middle of a life-or-death situation.

“Both of you, shush,” Sarah ordered. She heard Grogu start to growl his displeasure; the noise was swiftly drowned by a loud rumble.

For one breathtaking moment, the Razor Crest held still and mostly level in the air, some thirty feet above the sandy ground as Din maneuvered a slide-lever with one hand while Sarah focused on the stick controls. Sand below whipped itself up into a frenzy from the force of the wind they generated.

“Landing gear,” Din prompted as they swiftly began to descend down at a slight backwards angle to keep ahead of the worst of the disturbed sands, and line the back two feet up for first touch-down. 

“Engaged,” Sarah answered a moment later, and then the stark horizon-line outside the window wasn’t level anymore, and she registered the shift in gravity a heartbeat later.

Three voices blurted,  _ “Osik!” _ in disharmonious unison.

~*~

Marshal Cobb Vanth had seen a lot of things in his lifetime, and genuine surprise was something of a novelty to him nowadays.

So he was more amused than alarmed to find a fresh experience in witnessing a Razor Crest do a three-sixty spin-off mid-drop as it spat smoke from both engines. The back repulsors kicked in to throttle the ship forward ahead of a bucking crest of stirred up sand, and then the entire hulk of metal was settling crookedly on the ground in a hasty maneuver. A wash of fine dust and grains of sand bloomed around the landing site, and billowed out towards the town Cobb stood at the border of.

He’d rather hoped to make a dramatic greeting to the Mandalorian when the fellow brought his ship down, and Cobb knew his tall, lanky figure stretched a long shadow out behind him. Or… it had. The effect was rather both outdone and ruined by the smoke-and-sand show.

Now that the spectacle was over, and the sound of engines cut out as the spaceship powered down, Cobb started immediately forward into the haze. He loosened his blaster’s seat in its hip-holster as a perfunctory precaution with one hand, while the other tugged a thick, fibrous red scarf up over the lower half of his face. Pale blue eyes squinted first into the bright light and glaring sun, and then through the fine haze of silky dust as it muted the air around him.

Cobb paused thirty-some feet from the edge of the mess of disturbed sands. Many of the new piles and scalloped, dished-out pockets were still settling, and it caused an eerie, hissing undercurrent of white noise that emphasized the hush. In the center of the dunes, Mando’s Razor Crest was parked static and mostly upright. The spaceship was impressively level from nose to back, but the same was not true for side-to-side.

It became better visible as Cobb resumed walking over the loose ground, and came to a stop a safe distance away from the loosest of the sandy substrate.

The massive turbine on the end of the left wing was half-buried in the sand, and smoking thinly. The landing gear had sunk almost entirely to the base of the hull, more so on the left than the right because of the angle.

When nothing immediately happened, the Marshal put casually fisted hands on his hips, and waited to see what would happen next.

~*~

Din Djarin picked himself up off the slanted floor with a fresh bruise on his shoulder, almost startling painful - not that it really hurt that  _ badly, _ but it was more painful than it would have been if he’d had his padded  _ Kute _ and armor on, and the pauldron probably would have negated it entirely in the first place.

It served as a fresh and alarming reminder of his vulnerability as Din smoothed the wrinkles out of the borrowed shirt he wore, and didn’t have to look to realize with chagrin that it was ripped - the shoulder seams had opened up, and a ticklish sensation on the back of his neck made him think a back seam may have also split. He kept his eyes on Sarah and their Foundling as she wriggled out of her harness straps.

“Are you alright?” Sarah asked, twisting at the waist to look his way. Din stood with one knee bent to account for the tilted floor.

“Yes. Here,” he invited, and reached out with both hands to offer her help out of the chair. Sarah eyed them skeptically. Grogu’s ears perked as wide black eyes looked up at him, tiny fingers curled on the edge of his carrier. “They’re healed enough,” Din assured her. They were stiff and achy and he didn’t want to try any fiddly tasks with his fingers, but they weren’t wracked by debilitating agony anymore.

Though he’d have done it regardless, Din had to admit that feeling her soft, slim hands and the smooth leather that covered her palms fit against his made the discomfort worth it as Din carefully helped Sarah down.

“Well, we made it here alive,” she enthused as she settled in the corner with one foot on the wall, and the other on the floor. Her splinted arm protectively cradled Grogu.

Din had kept hold of her other hand, and she let him steady her.

When she caught her balance, she let him keep hold.

It was a good thing Sarah had closed up her washing station - by the time they made it into the crooked hull, Din had already run through several possible scenarios of what it’d look like.

He was surprised to find it blessedly dry. His gear was strewn around again, and the wash buckets had slid to the lower edges of the walls, but there wasn’t a soapy, grimey mess of water let loose everywhere.

Small fortunes.

Din quietly sighed his relief as Sarah led the way down the long room. He didn’t hover, but he did stay close to her, just in case. He didn’t know what substance she’d breathed in, if it could still be affecting her, but he still had a vivid memory of her stumbling steps during their escape.

Then they came to the back hatch, Sarah was reaching for the controls, and Din Djarin abruptly realized that he was in no condition to step foot off the ship.

No armor but his helmet, no weapons but his own two hands, shirt ripped -- he didn’t even have shoes on. Din was almost willing to shove bare feet into the soaking wet boots Sarah had painstakingly washed, except he wasn’t willing to let Tatooine’s heat destroy the leather by drying it too fast.

“Wait,” he urged, bandaged hand closed around his partner’s wrist before Din had even consciously registered he’d moved. “I--” he closed his mouth as blue eyes met his. In them, he saw Sarah’s curiosity and her concern, her focus and her patience. He knew Grogu was watching him, too, the child mulishly silent since his earlier burst of speech.

Din Djarin closed his mouth.

He couldn’t do it. He  _ wouldn’t _ do it.

He wouldn’t send her out of the ship alone while he hid inside like a coward, especially after recent events.

So he shut his mouth, and instead let go of her arm with a feeling of dread, and hit the control panel button himself. Din had learned to defend himself long before he’d earned his full set of armor; he didn’t like it, but he would manage.

“I’m sorry I crashed the ship, Din,” Sarah said uneasily as the door hissed open and warm, dry air washed over them. Her brows were drawn into a furrowed line. “We’ll get it fixed.”

She looked uncertain yet hopeful, and even though it didn’t show on her face, Din had a feeling she was anxious in response to his mood, because she hadn’t been this way moments before. Din shook his head at her as the door hit the sand with a soft, airy  _ thwump _ , then dug into it before coming to a jerky halt.

“It’s not that,” he assured. “You kept us alive; this isn’t as bad as it could have been.” He was rather impressed there wasn’t more immediate damage. In fact, he was impressed they’d made it here at all.

_ “Buir  _ fly good,” Grogu’s small voice contributed. Din’s spine went stiff, and not because hearing the foundling form understandable words was still startling to hear; his kid hadn’t just said it, he realized - Grogu had  _ quoted _ it. Din’s own words, tossed back at him, precisely chosen.

His gaze snapped from the child’s deceptively innocent eyes as he caught Sarah drawing one of her blasters from the corner of his visor.

Din’s eyes immediately darted outside to look for a threat as every inch of his body tensed to move, yet he didn’t see anything but settling dust and shifting sands.

Then Sarah’s hand settled at his hip and hitched his shirt up, and Din sucked in a sharp breath through his nose as he felt her slide her gun into his waistband, in place of his missing blaster and holster. It was the one she’d owned when he first met her, longer in the barrel and much clunkier in design, and just barely big enough to comfortably fit his hand; the small, sleek blaster he’d purchased for her remained secured in its newly modified holster just under her left arm.

“I’ve - Got - I’ve got others,” Din said faintly, surprised at his own faltering voice.

“And they’re all the way on the other end of the ship, up in the air,” Sarah pointed out. “Do you really want to have to use a grappling line to get a gun off the wall?”

That idea hadn’t occurred to him, and Din found himself stopping to actually consider the thought even though she’d said it in jest. He turned around to look at the closed doors of his weapons’ closet.

That he could make the throw to lasso a blaster with a loose line by hand, Din was fairly confident of. His vambraces weren’t an available option, even if part of him itched to put them on just for familiarity’s sake - they were disassembled into small parts and pieces, all their munitions and utilities stripped down for thorough maintenance, some still soaking in small canisters for a deep cleanse.

“If you weren’t wearing a helmet, I’d pinch your ear and drag you outside,” Sarah commented.

_ “Tion’jor ne’johaa?” _ Grogu grumbled as a reminder. His voice grew faintly strained at the end of his slapshod sentence, and Din wondered if the child’s developing muscles were already getting tired of talking.

“I haven’t forgotten, Grogu,” Din assured him. The child sighed, a tiny puff of air just barely audible over the sound of shifting sands. “We’ll talk about it later when we’ve got… Privacy,” Din finished, as his gaze turned outdoors.

A single figure approached through the haze.

Steeling himself, Din stepped forward and walked down the cock-eyed ramp, mildly relieved to hear a familiar voice call out a greeting. The metal was cool against his bare feet, and the tops of them stung in the contrast of dry, hot air on skin unused to exposure.

And they weren’t even out of the shade cast by the Razor Crest yet.

“Good to see you’re still in one piece, partner-- Or maybe not?” Cobb questioned as he came into view through the mist. “That really you under those rags, Mando?”

Din couldn’t help it - he cringed.

Behind him, Sarah’s footsteps come to a scuffing halt as Grogu burbled at her in wordless questioning. She had every right to be wary of strangers, and Din hadn’t missed the way Sarah kept almost jealous guardianship over Grogu each time Din had introduced her to someone. It was a good thing that she was wary, and it relieved him to see both her sensible caution and that she trusted his judgement enough to take cues from him.

At the moment, though, he’d admittedly feel much better with her closer by. Then again, she had a better line of sight to shoot from in her elevated position on the ramp behind him.

He didn’t have to be convinced a shoot-out was going to start, to be prepared to face it on the off chance it  _ did. _ The thought was as second-nature to him as breathing; it lingered at the forefront of his mind now only because he was hyper-aware of his vulnerable state.

“How’s the town?” Din asked, voice raised just enough to carry, confirmation enough of his identity as he came to a stop at the edge of the ramp, and eyed the loose sand ahead of them. It looked stable enough on this side of the ‘Crest, but the surrounding sides that were visible showed a dangerous slurry of pits and hills. Even as he watched, one slope suddenly gave way, and tumbled apart like a cracked egg before the whole thing sloughed into the deep bowl below, and began to refill it.

“Mos Pelgo is as fine as a freshly washed bantha,” Cobb proudly answered with good humor. He didn’t outright say it, but Din knew the Marshal had meant to imply a comparison between his own disarray and the mining town. “Owe you thanks again for helping make this a safe place for folks to…”

The man trailed off as he came to a stop some fifteen feet away, short, silvery hair noticeably a little shorter than the last time Din had seen him. The faded red tunic and brown pants were just as Din remembered, as was the cock-eyed belt that held Cobb’s blaster and a set of three small, metal-encased, screw-top bottles of unknown use.

What wasn’t familiar was the way Cobb Vanth drew himself up and  _ back, _ like he was afraid of something he saw, or maybe just taken aback. The man’s gaze wasn’t on Din anymore, and the Mandalorian turned to see Sarah as she stepped down to be beside him, then did a double-take.

Din Djarin had yet to witness this expression on her face before, with hard, cold-flecked eyes and pretty lips pressed firmly together without being squished into a thin line. Almost pursed, like she was either thinking of something to say, or holding herself back from speaking. It was different in mood than the face captured on her bounty puck, but no less dangerous.

She looked like a maelstrom just waiting to be unleashed, broiling with tension and wound up tight.

Din very quickly rethought his earlier musings that had hoped Sarah would enjoy meeting arguably the most personable of his acquaintances. Cobb Vanth had a knack for storytelling.

“You two know each other?” Din guessed bluntly as his hand settled on the small of Sarah’s back. Grogu looked around at all the adults with perked ears, even as he scrunched himself down into his carrier until his nose was hidden behind the edge of soft fur lining it.

“We do,” Sarah confirmed curtly. Her gaze never left the silent Marshal, and Din glanced between them.

“Didn’t… Expect to see you around here, ” Cobb started, his words uncharacteristically stiff and stilted. “You here with him, or… Or did you--”

“I’m not here to see you,” Sarah cut in. Her tone of voice was queerly flat yet acerbic, formal and crisp, almost militant.

Din hadn’t known Sarah could be so cold in mannerism, and was mildly disturbed to realize that if it weren’t for the fact she was using it on someone he was on friendly terms with, he’d probably be enjoying the sight with some twisted part of himself admiring her ability to assert herself. She wore her strength well.

And Din could admit to himself - privately, secretly - that he found Sarah to be a very alluring sort of attractive when she looked dangerous.

Now was not the time to give any attention to the electric thrill that ran down his spine, though.

“Alright, well.” Cobb seemed to just give up, like the air had deflated out of him, and he turned away with a lazy gesture for them to follow. “At least get out of the dust.”

The walk into Mos Pelgo was… tense.

Din had hoped Sarah might reach out to him with her thoughts to tell him what was going on, but she didn’t broach the topic telepathically or verbally, only remained aloof and straight-backed beside him as she practically prowled into the town. Her shoulders were drawn up without being over-taut, and she looked like she was spoiling for a fight. The Tusken cowl didn’t hide her dangerously severe expression, not with the way she wore it halfway on her head so that peripheral vision wasn’t obstructed.

Cobb Vanth was just as elusively silent as they followed him midawy down the short main street - really just an open, empty lane of sand - and to a familiar tavern. Din noted small changes as he recognized them - the blocky white buildings all looked to be in better repair than the last time he’d seen them, and there was an impressive series of several well groomed Banthas on a picket-line on the other side of town.

In silence the three of them entered the bar through an open archway without any doors. This early in Tatooine's daylit cycle, the room was refreshingly empty of all but its toad-skinned, alien bartender, who Cobb greeted almost gruffly.

“A round of drinks for the three of us - put it on my tab,” Cobb ordered.

“Comin’ right up,” the bartender answered hastily, likely in response to the mood of their little group.

Din surveyed the surroundings as he took a stool between Sarah and Cobb, and in short order the bartender had set three mugs down and vanished into the back room.

Din studied his companions anew. Sarah, stiff and formal and hovering somewhere between shutdown and murder, ignoring her drink entirely. Cobb, pretending to be relaxed and at ease as he leaned on the counter with one elbow and stretched out his long legs, but the smile no longer reached his light eyes as he took a generous swig from the wooden mug.

With the tavern's dim yellow lighting, the pale, crystalline blue of them almost looked muddy, yet something about the color snagged Din’s attention.

He turned to face Sarah more completely as he studied her features closely, then turned his head again to look back at Cobb. Neither one of them commented on his obvious scrutiny.

It couldn’t be; Cobb Vanth was too young to be Sarah’s father, Din was certain.

But he could be another relative. A brother, perhaps? Cousin? He noticed more similarities as they jumped out at him, painfully obvious now after so much time spent studying Sarah’s features.

It had to be; they were blood related.

A tingle ran down Din’s spine.

~*~

Cobb Vanth stared at his company over the rim of his mug as he swallowed down more of the bright blue liquor faster than was probably wise this early in the morning.

He almost wished he’d stayed in bed, as his gaze drifted down Sarah’s figure, assessing her state. She looked good, or at least he thought maybe she did - he hadn’t seen her in person since she was barely taller than his knees, and something painful lurched in Cobb’s chest.

“Is Angie still--”

“Yes,” Sarah answered, short and abrupt as her eyes, the same startling shade as her father’s, immediately flicked to zero in on Cobb’s.

He recognized her from hologram calls and family photos his sister-in-law Angie had sent over the years, but Cobb  _ didn’t _ recognize her eyes despite their familiar crystalline color, like a winter’s bright blue sky, frosted over.

Her fierce, dangerous gaze was almost alien, nothing like the soft brightness he remembered from years ago.

Cobb didn’t bother to ask her what had changed, as much as he wanted to. It didn’t take a genius to tell he wasn’t going to get any answers from her, not in the middle of her impressive temper rearing its head. He’d heard of it, but he’d never faced it personally.

All this thought in the single breath before Sarah decided to speak again.

“She can’t know I’m here, or that I’ve been here at all. You need to forget you saw me as soon as we leave, for your own good. If anyone asks, you don’t know me,” she urged in a quieter voice.

Cobb recognized the change in her tone immediately, and frowned as he scrutinized her. Sarah had leaned forward in her chair as she spoke, holding his gaze with an intensity that was different from her recent glowers and glares; she was making an earnest effort to make it clear her curt order was in earnest, not intentional rudeness.

“Am I going to get any answers if I try asking nice enough?” Cobb drawled as he casually rolled the liquor in his mug with a gentle rock of his wrist. “Or are we still not on speaking terms?”

Sarah sat up straighter in her chair, and Cobb kept his face carefully unchanging as Mando’s dark visor tilted his way, then remained there, a silent, still, and inscrutable stare.

“That depends on the questions,” Sarah answered flatly. “I ran into some trouble - The less you know, the safer you are. Mom  _ cannot _ know. Promise you will not contribute to informing her.”

Her subtle accent was gone entirely; the enunciated voice she had taken up was crisp and direct, almost militantly formal, and Cobb wondered where Sarah had learned to speak like that. It held little resemblance to his brother’s drawl or Angie’s melodic, almost bubbly speech.

Maybe that was the point; but had his little niece really grown up into a woman that spiteful? He didn’t want to think so.

“You’re a grown woman. It’s not my business to tell you what to do,” Cobb said carefully, ignoring the Mandalorian’s silent gaze as he let them talk family business. “But you better understand what you’re asking of  _ me. _ Angie’s not going to like this.”

“Mom’s not going to find out,” Sarah said with a hard edge to her voice, almost threatening.

When her fingers twitched the tiniest bit towards the sleek blaster holstered by her armpit, Cobb realized he was talking with a true stranger. It was an involuntary gesture, he was certain; it was as familiar to him as Tatooine’s blistering twin suns, just another part of daily life. That it had at some point become normal to Sarah’s life was strangely disappointing. Angie had wanted so much more for her.

“Not from me she ain’t, but only if you promise to drop the attitude. Stop posturing and threatening me like I’m some market thief, Button,” Cobb said finally, and watched her reaction closely.

Sarah’s eyes widened the slightest fraction as Mando’s helmet tilted between them.

It was brief, but Cobb saw the tiniest smile flash across Sarah’s eyes as they brightened at the childhood nickname, her features softening even though her lips never moved.

Maybe she wasn’t such a complete stranger, after all.

“Depends on how you define ‘attitude,’” Sarah negotiated, the first glimpse of humor in her eyes as she sat back. Cobb heaved an internal sigh of relief as her ferocious temper eased off. Not by much, but it was a start.

“Annoying, rude, and generally purposefully unhelpful,” Cobb outlined. Sarah huffed.

“We need to arrange repairs and refuel,” Mando cut in, and Cobb looked from his niece to his friend.

“We’ll get started on it tomorrow morning once the sands have settled. No sense losing someone in a sinkhole,” Cobb answered. Mando leaned back in his seat slightly just as Sarah leaned forward to wrap a hand around her mug of drink, one arm cradling the little green child Cobb remembered from Mando’s last visit.

Though her choice in employer certainly was, the fact that Sarah had apparently found herself a new nannying job wasn’t surprising.

As the Marshal lifted his gaze from studying the strangely adorable lifeform, his eyes snagged on a different shade of green.

Cobb blinked, then looked between the right-shoulders of both his guests.

“You two part of some club or something?” he questioned, then gestured to the matching symbols of a horned beast’s head. The likeness in design was unmistakable, even though they were of different craft.

“It’s not any concern of yours,” Sarah reminded flatly.

Cobb huffed at the disrespectful tone, but chose not to call her out on it.

He couldn’t be sure, but he had the impression her behavior was throwing her companion for a loop, because Mando’s inscrutable helmet slowly turned from Cobb to look at her, before drifting back to him.

Cobb was willing to indulge Sarah’s desire to be ignored as he turned on his chair to better face the Mandalorian. It was strange to see him in normal clothes, a plain torn tunic and pants. If you ignored the helmet and ripped seams, Mando almost looked… normal. More human, more personable.

“So, are repairs the only thing that brings you here?” Cobb wondered, then chased his question down with another burning rush of liquor down his throat.

“We need to lay low for a few days,” Mando supplied.

“That can be arranged,” Cobb answered. Ignoring the elephant in the room that probably had objections on principle, he continued to add, “I’ve got room in my house, you’ll have a place to put your boots for the night.”

“We’ll sleep on the ship,” Sarah interjected.

“Tonight?” Cobb prompted patiently. “When the sands are still settling? You’re lucky you were able to walk out of it at all with the mess you made. Angie’ll have my head if I have to go tell her I let you get eaten by the desert.”

Sarah shut her mouth, eyes narrowed, then dropped her gaze to glower into her mug.

Cobb wondered just what had happened over the years to make such a bright young woman so sour and moody. It couldn’t all be his brother’s fault.

His eyes darted to the enigmatic warrior his niece traveled with.

“...We’d be grateful for lodging,” the Mandalorian said into the silence after a pregnant pause. It was strange to see him in such obvious disarray, divested of all but the most recognizable piece of his armor, bare feet tucked under the bar-stool like the man was trying to hide them from sight.

Cobb snorted, then just shook his head.

“Right. Well. Let’s go,” he declared, and left his drink behind as he stood up.

“Right  _ now?” _ Sarah prompted.

“I’m hazarding a guess that our friend here could use a fresh shirt, and maybe some  _ shoes,” _ Cobb reasoned patiently as he walked to the open doorway. “Might as well give you a tour of the couch and guest bed now.”

“That’d be… Very kind,” the Mandalorian said, the distorted voice almost awkward sounding.

As his guests rose from their seats, Cobb didn’t miss the Mandalorian’s bandaged hand as it settled on the small of Sarah’s back. It was an unobtrusive, yet undeniably possessive gesture as the man stayed close to Sarah’s side. Cobb’s eyebrows rose.

He wonder if Angie knew her daughter was running around with a Mandalorian and his kid.

Come to think of it, Sarah’s outfit was uncannily similar to what Cobb remembered of the uniform Mando had worn underneath his armor when they first met. Cobb’s gaze darted to Sarah’s left hand, settled lightly against the child’s carrier, covered in a fingerless glove - if she wore a wedding band, it was hidden.

“You two are dating?” Cobb guessed bluntly as the couple approached. The Mandalorian’s chest jerked straighter as the helmet’s thin visor-line swung to face Cobb directly, just a fractional shift in movement from the doorway to his face.

Sarah’s gaze remained glued to the outdoors.

Neither one of the two immediately answered, but someone else did.

_ “Ridurroht!” _ the little child burbled loudly, sharp and crisp in the arid air.

Sarah’s gaze truly softened for the first time as she darted her eyes down to smile at the child, like she couldn’t help it, then her gaze flicked up to the Mandalorian, who still stood stiff and rigid beside her, only now he looked at the child.

Cobb was both perturbed and fascinated to see the play of emotion on his niece’s face as her eyes studied the inscrutable Beskar and it’s nearly opaque visor like she was looking at the man’s real face, not cold metal.

She’d probably seen it countless times, and Cobb idly mused it was a shame she wasn't likely to be convinced to tattle on what she’d seen, maybe draw a picture.

Some curiosities in life just weren’t meant to have answers.

“No, not… Not yet,” Mando said abruptly.

Cobb blinked, pretty sure the Mandalorian was answering the child rather than the first question.

“What’s it saying?” he wondered.

_ “His _ name is Grogu,” Sarah corrected primly.

“Let’s go,” Mando urged gruffly, and steered both woman and child forward with one hand as he led them outside. Bemused, Cobb pivoted to fall into step alongside as he took the lead towards the farthest end of town - which wasn’t all that far away - opposite the Razor Crest’s landing site.

~*~

Cool air, just a few blessed degrees lower than the outside temperature, was a welcome luxury as her Uncle led the way into his white-walled home.

Sarah barely noticed it.

The last to enter, she stopped at the door as it slid shut behind them, and stared at the interior of the cozy house. She had never been here before, had never visited her Uncle at his home - she hadn’t even been aware he’d lived on Tatooine.

She recognized it, though, from holo-calls and a rare color-video when Uncle Cobb had once mailed them a recording in a birthday card.

Small memories drifted closer to the surface as Sarah’s eyes took in worn, woven rugs strewn over the floor, old artifacts and useful tools alike hanging on the smoke-stained walls. The air smelled like a mechanic’s workshop touched with a bit of improbable coziness; dust, grease, metal - and a familiar incense that Sarah recognized from her youth with a bittersweet pang of emotion.

It felt like homesickness, yet not; Sarah had no desire to make herself comfortable here, had no desire to return to places she’d left behind, yet she let herself be coaxed further into the square space she felt strangely connected to.

She’d have thought there would have been more drastic changes over the years, yet her Uncle’s home was just as she remembered it.

There was a second story she hadn’t known about, visible from outside as an oblong bulge above the large box of the main level; Sarah spotted the staircase that led up to it on the farthest corner of the room, next to an alcove that led into a small, cozy looking kitchen.

The open space held a variety of furniture and a plethora of Cobb’s personal effects; the near-center of the room was occupied by an overburdened coffee table made from shortened saw-horses and an old door, piled high with half-assembled mechanical parts, some rolled up blueprints, and a series of cutting boards and soldering tools scattered beneath the mess. A toolbox sat on the floor beside the table, really just a repurposed ammo crate with a reinforced leather handle, piled full of useful gadgets.

The room held two couches, one of which was piled with leather tack that Sarah suspected was for a Bantha, and the other decorated by a jauntily-colored blanket. Above the sofa on the wall, amidst many other mounted items on display, a large hide was stretched in a circle of stiffened rope, the furry side facing the wall.

Sarah couldn’t be certain, but something about the abstract swirls of delicate lines and twisting, bold designs painted onto the leather reminded her strongly of the Tuskens. It was the colors, she decided - all pale, faded desert hues paired with striking, darker accents that brought to mind Tatooine’s night sky.

Sarah jolted at the sensation of tiny claws clutching at the thick, slightly stretchy neck covering she wore, managing to tug it down a little. She looked down without tilting her head as best she could, scrunching her face back on her neck, and found her son staring up at her with a determined expression, one hand fisted in the colar of her dickie, the other stretching for her jaw.

Sarah gently caught his little hand in her fingers and thumb, and was surprised at the amount of strength she had to exert to gently move his hand away and down.

“No, Grogu. I don’t want that done, and that’s a choice I should be allowed to make for myself,” she explained gently.

She glanced over at the sound of her Uncle’s familiar laugh, probably over something Din had said if it wasn’t one of Cobb’s own jokes, and watched as the two men vanished up the stairs in the far corner.

As she dropped her gaze back to the surly looking super-powered alien space baby squinting at her, Sarah corrected her assumption - she could hear her Uncle walking around.

Din was entirely silent.

It wasn’t as strong as when she’d been standing right beside him, yet she realized she could still feel a faint tickle of her partner’s mood, which hadn’t changed much since they’d first stood at the door to the Razor Crest’s exit.

Grogu growled at her, and Sarah closed her mouth mid-way to opening it to scold him for it, because she thought she knew why he’d done it.

Her cheeks turned pink as she awkwardly found a place to tentatively sit, the very edge of the open sofa, and she helped the child out of his carrier.

“I’m sorry, Grogu. I’m not trying to ignore you,” she explained softly. His ears pricked a bit, and something in his expression seemed to soften despite the fact there wasn’t a distinctly obvious difference in muscle movement, besides his eyes. Sarah was glad he wasn’t squinting quite so hard at her.

Even if he did emphatically  _ raspberry _ at her to showcase his mood.

She could picture his frustration easily - wanting to speak and be involved, yet not quite grasping enough comprehension of situational context that mature adult’s did, and not proficient enough in verbal speech to easily participate in discussion. He was in that odd in-between place for children, when they were too young to really understand the full picture, yet could consciously grasp the majority of what went on around them.

Sarah settled a hand over his warm little head, gently cupping her fingers around his almost oblong skull. The white peach fuzz was soft and ticklish against her skin, and her heart just about melted as she watched Grogu close his eyes and lean into the contact with a happy coo. He landed a critical hit smack-dab in the center of Sarah’s chest when his three-fingered hands reached up to curl against her wrist in his own tiny cuddle.

It was easy to say the words that came next; genuine in every way, taken from her heart, Sarah didn’t even have to think about them. They fell off her lips just as she caught motion in the corner of her eye.

~*~

Having left Cobb behind to rummage through his wardrobe in search of something that might fit a man with far broader shoulders than the lanky Marshal sported, Din Djarin came to a stop at the bottom of the stairs.

He hadn’t had to ask - Cobb had told him he was Sarah’s uncle, and Din wasn’t sure how he felt about knowing the bonus of unsolicited stories about a much younger Sarah, one who rarely wasn’t in some state of talking, laughing, or childish singing.

He felt a little guilty he hadn’t opened his mouth to tell Cobb to stop, and wondered how his partner would react to the knowledge.

He didn’t quite feel guilty enough to regret it.

When neither Sarah or their Foundling immediately noticed him, Din leaned against the wall as he watched them interact. Arms quietly folded over his chest, he found himself smiling as he admired the picture they made together. Sarah sat perched at the very edge of the couch cushion like she was ready to spring up at any moment, yet the way she handled the child in her lap was so very gentle. Dainty and dangerous, she was beautiful.

And there was just something he loved about seeing her holding his kid that made him feel all melty inside. Grogu had all his attention on Sarah, sitting straight-backed in her lap with his little green toes just barely peeking out from beneath his robe.

Grogu was still wearing his pouty expression, and Din started forward.

...and realized that part of his face was beginning to hurt. It was a strange sensation, if only because it was unfamiliar; he’d been smiling for just long enough that the muscles were protesting the foreign movement, and he didn’t think his clanmates could inspire a better mood for him.

“I love you, kiddo,” Sarah murmured affectionately, a familiar expression on her face as she brushed her fingers gently over the child’s head. “We’ll spend some family time together. Maybe we can coax your Dad to join us for cuddles again,” she suggested with a conspiratorial wink. Grogu squealed his agreement and delight just as Din drew abreast of the sofa.

Din swore he felt his heart come to a legitimate  _ stop _ for one shattering moment, then skip forward until it settled in an accelerated pace as Sarah finally noticed him, and turned to face him.

Though she was clearly caught off guard, her expression didn’t overly change - that same wealth of affection and care shone brightly in her eyes as she smiled softly at him, and her shock faded away.

He’d been about to say something, but Din couldn’t remember what it was. That was alright; this was much better.

_ “Buuuuuuuuuuuuir!” _ Grogu purred - there really wasn’t a better way to describe the way the child drew out the  _ ‘oo’ _ noise. Din tore his eyes away from Sarah’s as he met the Foundling’s gaze, and extended his hand out to the kid when Grogu reached for him with both hands.

“Now ain’t that a cute picture,” Cobb drawled as his boots thumped down the steps. Din looked over his shoulder to find the man carrying a pile of cloth in his arms, then looked back at a quiet noise of discontent from the child. “So how long have you two been together?”

Din scooped the child up as he opened his mouth to answ--

“Not important,” Sarah asserted crisply.

He turned to look at her. The precious, tender expression was erased from her face, and replaced with something cool and unyielding.

Din didn’t like it, not at all.

But there wasn’t a good way to broach the matter, not with company at hand, and he didn’t have the benefit of Sarah’s telepathic ability to reach out for a private question.

So he only closed his mouth as he watched her eyes, hoping she might somehow recognize his feelings on the matter, then turned back to face Cobb to take in his reaction.

Sarah’s Uncle didn’t seem overly perturbed, but he didn’t seem happy, either.

“I thought we agreed you’d drop the attitude?” Cobb questioned as he approached.

Din shifted Grogu into the crook of his left arm, and awkwardly accepted the bundle of shirts to try on. His Foundling’s claws prickled ticklishly against his skin, easily felt through the thin, roughspun fabric of the torn shirt he wore.

“Stop asking nosy questions,” Sarah answered sweetly.

Cobb rolled his eyes expressively, then threw his hands up in the air in mock surrender.

“The house still going to be standing if I leave you two alone?” Din questioned dryly as he adjusted the cloth in his hold.

Cobb just shook his head and found a seat at the opposite end of the sofa, and Sarah turned to accept Grogu back.

“If I wanted to level his house, I’d have just landed on it,” Sarah answered with an amused smirk, though it didn’t quite reach her eyes.

Grogu protested silently - his claws dug into Din’s shirt as he carefully detached the foundling from his chest, and settled the kid back into Sarah’s hold.

“Guest room is all yours. Sarah, you get the sofa,” Cobb outlined bluntly.

She turned to look at him.

Din paused mid-way from turning towards the stairs, and looked back.

He wasn’t sure why he did - he’d already seen the closet Sarah’s uncle called a guest room. It probably had something to do with the way Sarah drew herself up, and stared at her Uncle like she was crafting a new strategy on how to disembowel him.

“Are you splitting us up intentionally?” she asked bluntly.

Cobb snorted, and crossed a leg as he looked away and picked up a screwdriver off the ground, and began to fiddle with it between his fingers.

“Of course not. You’re short enough to take the sofa,” Cobb reasoned. Din knew it wasn’t going to be enough of an explanation even before she answered.

“Then I should fit in his bed just fine,” Sarah pointed out tartly.

Din was glad his helmet hid the warmth that rose in his cheek at her frank choice of words. Cobb made a choking, coughing noise without opening his mouth, and Grogu looked at them all curiously. Din could guess where the kid’s thoughts were - he was probably thinking about family cuddle time.

Din, however, was definitely thinking about more than innocent cuddles. As the two continued to bicker, he quietly made for the stairs. The sooner he got dressed, the better.

“There’s not going to be any funny business in my household!” Cobb spluttered from behind. “I’m  _ not _ babysitting the kid for you,” he added stiffly.

“Grogu  _ sleeps _ with us,” Sarah replied with a huff, sounding both affronted and exasperated. “I’m not asking for a date night, I’m telling you I want to stay with my family. Not that it’s any of your business,” she added, her voice beginning to grow acerbic in tone again.

Cobb probably opened his mouth to reply. If he did, the man shut it as Din voiced his own decision on the matter, chest warm and tight as he turned around at the top of the stairs to look back down at them.

“Our clan stays together,” he announced, voice unintentionally rough, then turned away before Cobb could protest - but not before Sarah turned to look up at him, and entreated Din to a dazzling smile and prettily flushed cheeks. Grogu was held under her chin with his wide black eyes bright and alert, a happy expression on his face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know, this chapter was *meant* to be very plot-orientated, and maybe even bring our little traveling family into [REDACTED].
> 
> I can't say I'm disappointed at the drastically different turn it took, so enjoy some slice of life and family drama while Din and company heal and recoup from their recent misadventure ;D I've been wanting to touch on Sarah's family for some time.
> 
> We'll get to the other things when the story is ready for them xD
> 
> \----
> 
> Fun trivia:
> 
> I HAVE NO IDEA HOW HIGH THE RAZOR CREST SHOULD BE FOR LANDING. WEEEEE. If someone who has more flying experience than I do (or even just knows more about it!) can point out if I chose believable numbers or if they're totally unrealistic, please do provide some suggestions to tweak it. I did my best estimate xD
> 
> Cobb Vanth was originally going to be Sarah's birth father, and it didn't quite feel right, especially because Cobb Vanth is much too young to be her dad, and I didn't want to tweak him to be an older man.
> 
> I've known for a while I wanted him to be blood related to Sarah, and I hope I pulled off the introduction of that without making it overly jarring. This is another chapter I will probably want to revisit again down the road to tweak and refine, but it's good enough for now ;D
> 
> Can't remember if it was Numi or Mama who gave me the idea of Cobb being Sarah's father's brother - aka her Uncle. I like this so much better.
> 
> I really thought hard about how to word Grogu's speech. Poor little guy - can't quite get his mouth to form the harsh "k" sound in Riduurok, but he's getting much better with other consonants. Ridduroht is so close!
> 
> \---
> 
> Mando's translations:
> 
> Buir Kadala - Coliqually, Grogu was saying "But Mom, you're wounded!" Literally, he said: "MOM WOUNDED." (buir = mom/dad ... Kadala = Wounded)
> 
> Osik - "Shit" Mando'a cuss
> 
> Tion'jor - "Why?"
> 
> “Tion’jor ni ne’johaa, al buir johaiir?” - Coliq: "How come you and dad can talk, but I have to stay quiet?" Lit: "Why I shut up, but Mom/Dad talk?" 
> 
> Kute - The assembled bodysuit worn beneath Mando armor
> 
> “Buuuuuuuuuuuuir!” - Ok this should be obvious by now, but it amuses me to translate it anyways: "DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAD!"
> 
> \---
> 
> WORD PROMPTS AND SUCH:
> 
> A huge shout-out to everyone who guessed what Grogu was trying to say (Riduurok was the correct guess, marriage/love-bond ;D) I'm working on prompts now... I will likely be seeding them throughout the story rather than dumping them all into one chapter.
> 
> And a big thank you to everyone who provided prompts and ideas; it's given me some great content for future chapters and some ideas for adding things in along the way. I'm really entertained so many of you love seeing things from Grogu's POV!


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